Harmony Shepard and the Nanite Hive
by Guardian54
Summary: J.K. Rowling was a pen-name Harmony Jane Shepard, older twin of Hermione Jean Granger, later used when publishing her memoirs in fantasy novel form to raise money for the Global Liberation Army. Here be grenades, guns, explosions, and the real story of Harry Potter's 1st year at Hogwarts, complete with scientific explanations, logic, and a Janitor. Later Ha/Ha? H/G? Both? Hmm...
1. The Next Generation

A/N: I am about to borrow my favourite song from Avatar: The Last Airbender as a lullaby. Many of the things Harmony and Hermione will do are things I actually did in my childhood, for example fussing very little unless sick, practically not knowing how to cry, reading at a very young age, etc. Of course, I am not magical and certainly never had the guts to ride a large roller coaster (I only rode small coasters twice, and hated it)

I decided that it would be better to put a chapter or two of this up before I did anything else after finishing Part 4 of the Archives, since this essentially commits me to eventually writing this all out instead of being too lazy to actually write it. Don't worry, it will be considerably abbreviated compared to the actual Harry Potter series. BE WARNED, THIS CHAPTER MAY BE SUBJECT TO RE-WRITING WITH GOOD TIME, IT'S NOT NEARLY AS REFINED AS I'D LIKE IT TO BE.

**PAIRINGS: R/Hr, H/Hr(?), H/G(?) Note: Hr stands for TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE. So, while I rant in a later A/N about R/Hr, don't dismiss the H/Hr possibility. You have been warned.**

* * *

Chapter 1: The Next Generation

_October, 1980_

"_Leaves from the vine… Falling so slow… Like fragile, tiny shells… Drifting in the foam…"_ Jane Shepard sang softly as she watched her elder daughter falling asleep. Harmony seemed to like that song a lot when she wanted to sleep, though she would more often go to sleep without it and was okay with that too. She wasn't a very needy or fussy child and, like her sister, tended to make whimpering noises instead of crying whenever she wanted a nappy change, milk or water. She would offer water every hour or so, and the twins seemed to both use the signal of sucking and rejecting as their indication that they wanted her milk instead. On other occasions, they would make grabbing motions at her breasts, which was often far more obvious, or even push their father away when he picked them up. Apparently they knew he didn't have any food for them.

Fortunately, she had enough milk to fulfil both their needs without any help from formula. Both girls seemed very bright judging by behaviour. When they wanted nappy changes or water though, they didn't distinguish between their parents. Though both had been somewhat under-sized and under-weight by normal birth standards at birth, had both been growing quickly, like her mother said had happened with Jane and all her siblings. They had both figured out how to roll over on the same day in early October, and both liked it when their parents read to them. However, Hermione liked to sleep in quiet, while Harmony didn't mind noise, though she reacted positively only to that particular tune for some odd reason. Ah well, even twins had differences between them after all.

* * *

_December, 1981_

Dan Granger was very worried with the way the war was going down in the United States and in assorted other theatres of the world, including North Africa and the Middle East. He was also wondering if what his two toddling girls were doing was remotely normal baby behaviour. He had been ordered to take long-term leave from work by his boss (i.e. Jane) to take care of the children while she was busy supervising the home front. He was overhearing a lot of information as he watched her make secure phone calls from her office, at his station near the twins' play pen. Jane had decided to include a book shelf in the playpen, so now Dan was mostly just the waiter for all three young (or young-looking in Jane's case. Though Dan would never complain about it and was the envy of all his colleagues for it, he sometimes still wondered what, if anything, she saw in him and just what he'd done to deserve being with her.) ladies of his family whenever they wanted something to eat or drink, or to go potty in the case of the twins (they'd learned that too).

He didn't mind per se (despite being a dentist, he didn't enjoy the smell that came with drilling or etching teeth), but it did get a bit tedious after a while, so he started bringing his own books too. The twins were just lounging around all day looking through the books their mother had picked out for them, books full of knowledge. They couldn't be READING those (relatively) larger books already, could they? Then again, given who their mother was, he wouldn't be too surprised. Harmony had already learnt to look up words she couldn't pronounce using a dictionary and, via showing him the page and pointing at the word, get her point across. Interestingly, she was less adept at talking than Hermione… or so it seemed.

* * *

_Late 1985_

Hannah crouched down to show the bundle of blankets she was holding to the two five-year-olds. "Meet your new cousin."

…

…

"She's adopted." Hermione stated rather flatly, looking at the vaguely Asian-looking black-haired girl sleeping in her aunt's arms. There was no resemblance and Aunt Hannah hadn't been pregnant in the last eight months when they'd seen her, though those were rare occasions at best.

"She's psychic. Very strong too." Harmony added, to which Hermione nodded.

Jane did NOT see that response coming. Did her daughters just gauge psychic strength spot-on, even by the vaguest standards? That probably meant… they were psychic too, kind of like how Jane had begun to show signs of psychic capability after being targeted by a Yuri Clone (who completely failed to break into her mind) at melee range during Operation Brain Wash in London. So far she was still only moving small objects and actually needed to concentrate, but given she was only feeling her way around she expected it would grow quickly enough. The thing was that she'd made sure they were not in danger from the Psychic Dominator Disaster by annihilating Yuri forces, Beacons and Psychic Dominators before they could get anywhere close to her family, so it couldn't be their minds lashing back against psychic strikes. That was the suspected cause of her own newfound telekinesis, but it couldn't be like that for her daughters, right?

She was quite correct on this one, at least.

* * *

_1988_

Harmony was showing a set of sketches to her mother as soon as Jane came back from "work" and finished greeting her daughters. Hermione had run off back to her library books, which Dad had taken them out to get yesterday, as soon as she was finished greeting Mom, but Harmony stayed around. From when they had been born, their parents had kept the fact that her mother was basically co-dictator of a good part of the world from them. Harmony had finally put all the pieces together a few months ago, and decided to submit some designs to impress her mother. For lack of better terms, both Harmony and Hermione were very intelligent (extreme and unforgivable understatement), though Hermione liked theory more and her older sister preferred practical subjects.

"These are very nicely drawn, Harmony, and very well thought out for an eight-year-old." Jane was rather tired after a long and annoying day, so she wasn't paying nearly as much attention as she probably should have. "Siege walker, preliminary concept sketch." She read off the title at the bottom of the sketch, then glanced at the next few titles in the stack of papers "Practical Coil-gun, Suppressed-Signature Laser Strike Weapon, Magneto Hydrodynamic Plasma Beam…" before passing it back to her daughter "That's great, now let me just get changed…" She suddenly stopped mid-stride and backed up a couple steps to where her elder daughter was grinning mischievously "Let me see that again."

Her eyebrows drifted up higher and higher as she looked through the concept designs "Did you do all this on your own?" Her bushy-haired baby girl nodded vigorously "This is awesome, Harmony…what about the calculations?"

Harmony's face fell "They're only concept designs, so I only did the calculations for the weight loading and stresses of the walker legs and the coil-gun mechanisms… The power levels the weapon can muster can't stack up to conventional APFSDS rounds" Jane raised her eyebrows at this since Harmony was using such a specific, technical term, she wondered exactly what sorts of books Harmony had wheedled her father into getting her, given her hubby was wrapped around the little fingers of their daughters "yet, but I think given a couple decades it will be able to match up. The laser focusing array is just an idea to try to reduce the excess deflected light that traces the trajectory of a conventional high-powered laser, and the plasma beam is practically all speculation."

"Don't worry about it, baby, you've far exceeded my expectations anyways." Jane crouched down and hugged her daughter, not telling her about some of the calculation errors and major design flaws she'd noticed in her daughter's first attempts at designing "You're only seven years old, you have a lot of tie to learn and to calculate…"

"Mom, I gave you those because I figured out exactly who you are. You don't work in Dad's dentist office, do you?" She said quietly right next to her mother's ear.

Jane knew that something was up, but pretended not to know anything "why would you say that, sweetie?"

"I actually thought about exactly what I read of history, and I know you make yourself look completely different whenever you go to work, unlike Aunt Hannah. I made the connection before Hermione did, or maybe she's just ignoring the facts before her on purpose, but the point is that I figured out you, Jane Shepard, are one of the two leaders of Shepard's Independents. Whenever you go to work, you're doing that instead of going to Dad's dentist office." She then went on a talking spree—highly unusual as she was usually quiet and a bit of a wallflower while Hermione liked to lecture people on anything and everything—about exactly how she knew what her mother did for a living. Then she started talking about wanting to learn some useful life skills, since being the child of such an important person was dangerous.

It took about five minutes for Jane to convince her daughter she was not old enough to learn tank driving or aircraft piloting yet, however, the eight-year-old did manage to get her mother to agree to basic martial arts training and limited basic firearms training. As for how she managed this, it roughly came to "Mom, I can handle the recoil of a pistol-type high-low propulsion grenade launcher, it's supposed to be pretty small compared to most other weapons, and I think I'll be able to handle a pistol by the time I'm ten or eleven. You want me to be able to protect myself, don't you? And it's much more useful than Hermione's piano and dance classes, right?" Harmony had refused to learn an instrument or to dance, unlike Hermione who had wanted the offer from their parents and wasted (this was in Harmony's opinion, which she never told her sister) hours each day practicing her arts, so she had more reading time to learn stuff, mostly math, physics and chemistry. She figured she could learn about politics later, after all, if she wanted to help her mother out with work when she grew up, she needed to learn some stuff about politics and how to use people and circumstances to one's advantage.

Jane, on the other hand, was very impressed that her elder daughter was showing such ambition at a young age and had already begun moving on a course that would allow her to fulfill that ambition. She was a real Shepard… maybe she should have listened to Dan and had all their kids follow her last name. If she ever conceived again (they were trying, but no success yet) she'd go with him on this one. That was what she was thinking as she watched Harmony play her newly-purchased, just-released video game, StarCraft.

* * *

_1991_

For finishing some very high-levelled (i.e. University-level or higher, depending on which twin and which subject it was) course work by the end of June (the "best before" date, not the "due by" date, Jane was getting Harmony used to how SI Research Squadrons worked) Jane and Dan agreed that they needed to treat the twins somehow… and decided to go to an amusement park. Hermione and Harmony were barely tall enough to ride the tallest roller coaster in the place, and badgered their parents about it over lunch after going on some smaller rides, since the coaster would be open again after lunch, being closed for some maintenance. Apparently, this was a good time for several secret agents to plant explosives on the tracks after overhearing them. It would be much more untraceable than simply having a shoot-out, and given the number of bodyguards probably lurking around in the crowd, much more likely to succeed too.

Dan Granger thought the roller coaster was too scary (his daughters teased him for it mercilessly) and decided to go to the gift shop nearby to browse. The stand-up roller coaster in question had four corkscrews of assorted sizes, two in-line twists, and two towering vertical loops, neither of which were exactly his thing. The explosives were remote-detonated just as the coaster finished dropping (vertical descent) down the third hill, headed for the second vertical loop (which shifted left during the actual loop part). It had already passed two corkscrews and had just passed the last set of emergency block brakes before the 25-meter-tall loop. The descending half of the loop was blown away leaving the train to tear its way up the ascending loop, the passengers being bombarded by shrapnel, before it flew upside-down off the track at the top of the broken loop.

For Harmony and Hermione, sitting in the row in front of their mother, it seemed as if everything was slowing down as the stand-up coaster train soared through the air and began to drop toward the ground, the head dropping faster than the tail as it had had more time to accelerate downward from gravity and was also meeting more air resistance. The ground came closer and closer and Hermione squeezed her eyes shut wishing she had stayed behind with her father and persuaded her mother and sister to do the same. She had been scared of the ride too, and it was only because Harmony wanted to go that she agreed. Now they were going to die… and she was so young too…

In the silence of the roller coaster train whistling through the air, Harmony was also wishing she had stayed to go to the gift shop with her father, though she kept her eyes wide open despite the stinging of a piece of shredded steel cutting her cheek. She, with her head tucked in to protect her neck from shrapnel, was staring death in the face as it came closer and closer to her face, which would probably be the first part to hit the ground and be splattered across it, especially given this was a stand-up coaster. She blinked as there was a small popping noise, a squeezing feeling, and her arm was yanked hard. She was suddenly looking around the inside of the gift shop and Hermione, next to her, had just fainted. "What. The. Fuck." She said to herself, looking around with her mouth gaping wide open, but then a loud crashing and metallic crunching outside brought her back to her senses and she rushed outside (picking her sister up to do so) along with everyone else to see if her mother had somehow, miraculously, survived too. If she was not wrong, her father should be around here somewhere…

"Dad!" She called as she sighted his mop of unruly brown hair, and managed to shove her way through the crowd to him.

"Harmony! What happened to Hermione?" He wrapped both of them in a hug just as Hermione woke up "I thought you were on that coaster train…" he was sobbing with relief.

"We were. I think I teleported." Harmony stated dryly only to have her father freeze and pull back. She could see the question in his eyes "Mom is still on that train."

"We need to find her then…" Dan bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood as he, along with other relatives of people on the train, was pushed back by the emergency services people. Apparently, when the coaster had hit the ground, it had been moving sideways (due to the lateral displacement needed for a loop) fast enough that it had wrenched sideways violently as it smeared most of the forward passengers across the grassy ground, The very front rows were completely gone while toward the middle it was usually just missing torsos or heads. The stench of shredded guts was overwhelming but the crowd watched in horrified fascination as they saw that the last car had twisted around and was facing the way they had come. Most of them were actually in one piece, and the Granger/Shepard family spotted dark red hair, Jane's.

By the time they unfastened the harnesses, most of the few surviving passengers had been severely maimed by shrapnel or were so internally injured that they died in the next few hours or days, but Jane got away with only a cut on the top of her head from shrapnel. The first thing she did when she managed to compose herself and stand on her own was to walk over to her family (annoying protesting emergency services personnel enough they threw up their arms in exasperation and went to help others, though one still kept watch on her), seize her daughters in a big hug, and tell her husband and kids in a trembling voice "I am _never_ riding another roller coaster… it's lucky that I don't know how to die, I thought I'd lost you two…" It was the second time Dan Granger had seen his wife cry, the first time had been when he proposed. The girls and their father could only nod mutely and watch as Jane was taken away by the ambulance to hospital for observation. She would be one of the few to go to hospital, most of the victims of the crash went straight into body bags.

Of course, Jane grilled the twins over their teleportation situation once they all came home (the whole family went to the hospital to keep her company). She compared the twins' report of the experience to Chronosphere travel out loud, then hurried off to phone Einstein over where he'd gotten his idea from. The yelling she did to the old, respected scientist was mostly incomprehensible through her door, the twins only caught something that sounded like "Apparition", "Squib", "IFV Transformations", "Chrono Legionnaire", "Vanishing Charm", "Knight Bus" and "Chrono Miner" through the door. Jane was however angrily muttering later about knowing just why Einstein was still alive despite his old age. Harmony told the truth, that she didn't know how it happened, it just had… kind of like how sometimes both the twins would make books fly across the room to them. Harmony later told her mother that she had now understood that being able to neutralize an enemy did one no good unless you knew where, what and who the enemy was. She had surmised that it was another assassination attempt on her mother, and Jane agreed with her elder daughter.

Thus began basic stealth recon training for Harmony. Unlike Hermione, she had never put too much effort into school since elementary school didn't matter that much in the end, so she had had a lot more time to learn stuff that Hermione hadn't learnt because she was too busy with revising school projects for the nth time. This turned out to be extremely fortunate for both twins, as the skills Harmony was learning from tutors her mother brought in would prove invaluable in the future. Technically, these were military trainers, but Hermione just knew them as tutors for whatever Harmony liked to do that Hermione did not and left it alone like how Harmony left her piano and dance lessons alone.

On July 30th, Dan Granger opened the door to greet a rather serious-looking middle-aged woman holding a pair of thick, yellow-parchment envelopes. She wore glasses and had a stern air about her. The envelopes were addressed in green ink and had no stamps. They did, however, have wax seals on them. The seals showed a coat of arms with a lion on the upper left, a snake beside it, a badger on the bottom left and an eagle on the bottom right, surrounding the letter H.

This woman's name, as they found out upon greeting her, was Minerva McGonagall.

* * *

A/N: There you go, accidental magic like Harry's (he Apparated onto the school kitchens' roof), a few lines from a song that will be referenced twice more in this series, and of course the visit. Hogwarts professors are referred to as visiting muggle-born students to deliver their letters and explain things, after all… I think we also figured out where Hermione got her fear of heights from (and how she never even thought to fly upside-down on a broom), this sort of experience is rather effective at weaning a person off of high drops…

Among the shortest chapters I ever wrote, I think, only 3600 words…

REVIEW!


	2. We're Off To See the Wizards

A/N: I will put a character profile here, and I will try to do the same for every new year I write. However, expect this fic to be on-hold for quite some tie as I polish off other projects one by one. Real life is getting busier and busier…

* * *

Chapter 2: We're Off To See the Wizards

_July 30, 1991_

After passing the questioning by Dan, Minerva McGonagall was invited into the average-sized home that played the part of residence to several very un-average people. "So, you wanted to speak with us about our daughters' uh…magic." Dan began, both he and Jane had agreed to fake dumb when the recruiter came, if there was one. Given the way this Minerva McGonagall spoke of their daughters, she probably was the "magical" school recruiter they had been waiting for. They had both just read through Professor McGonagall's letter and were sort-of-fake staring at her. "Surely you, Professor, as the Deputy Headmistress, do not have the time to visit the homes of all new students?"

"Yes." McGonagall obviously liked getting straight to the point, as her appearance suggested. "As for the visit, Professors only visit the homes of muggle-born students, and for the last decade or so there have been so few each year that it takes me less than a week to visit them all, even going to only two homes a day, though I will usually do more. Now, I'm sure you" she smiled slightly at the two more or less identical girls, both quite tall for their age—one seemed more weathered than the other to her—"have many questions."

Before the question exchange began, the twins had been poring over the letters (which were almost identical):

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

_Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE_

_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

_Dear Miss Granger/Shepard,_ (depending on the twin in question)

_We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment._

_Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Minerva McGonagall,_

_Deputy Headmistress_

"Magic, Professor, Really?" Harmony asked sceptically, taking note of the honorific used, as per her pretence of not knowing of "magic". Hermione had said the same thing, in the same tone, at the same time. Harmony was internally pleased to note that they sounded indistinguishable despite her having been briefed on as much as her parents knew whereas Hermione was unaware.

"Yes, magic." Professor McGonagall was quite used to this shocked-into-repeating phenomenon for muggle-born students by now, after years of doing visits to homes…

"Okay… could you demonstrate some magic for us?" Jane asked slowly with a deep frown which was thoroughly fake (though this was not apparent). She was home for her daughters' birthday, but hadn't expected the recruiter to come TODAY.

Both Jane and Dan had tensed almost invisibly when she reached inside her robes to retrieve her wand. Jane chalked it up to years of being in her family and thus needing paranoia to survive the assassination attempts. "You are taking this quite well I see…" with a wave of her wand Professor McGonagall turned the kitchen table into a mouse, which morphed into a vase (which she had fly around the room doing acrobatics) and finally was transformed back into a kitchen table. "These are just a few of the things magic can do."

"Can it teleport objects between locations? Make something look like something else? Have flying objects do sudden turns without the riders being thrown to one side too much?" Jane asked in quick succession. If so, then Einstein really was a genius, replicating so much psychic capability—the product of the most complicated supercomputer known i.e. the brain—with technology. Perhaps that was why Yuri kidnapped him during the Psychic Dominator Disaster to improve the Psychic Dominator so that it wouldn't knock Yuri absolutely flat on his back with the recoil of commanding so many bodies at once. Fortunately, Einstein had only sabotaged it more.

"Yes, yes and yes." Jane's left eye twitched once _Chrono tech, Mirage Tanks, Rocketeers… Einstein, you are one hell of a genius to pull off so much effect replication._ She thought bitterly. _If only her own research crews could pull that sort of thing off…_

"Is something wrong?" In Minerva's experience, eye twitches were not usually good signs when it came to parents' reactions toward magic.

"No, it's just… amazing would be the best term I think." That was certainly true, especially as Hermione was _still_ opening and closing her mouth like a fish in shock.

"I understand, it is a lot to take in at once, and it will be even more impressive when you visit Diagon Alley in London for your school materials. To enter, simply look for the Leaky Cauldron, it'll appear to be a shabby-looking pub, on Third Street. Speak to Tom the bartender, or any of the bartenders, and they'll get you into Diagon Alley. Gringotts, the bank, should be very obvious, occupying the opposite end of Diagon Alley from the main entrance. It is goblin-run and can convert Muggle money to wizarding money, which you will need to use at the shops."

"Understood, we'll be there tomorrow to pick up the twins' school supplies." Jane stated simply.

Hermione on the other hand wanted to ask a question and raised her hand. Professor McGonagall inclined her head at Hermione in recognition of this "Excuse me, but how does the Wizarding monetary system work?"

"We have three types of coins," the Professor pulled out a handful of oddly-shaped coins "Knuts, the bronze ones, silver Sickles" The silver coins did look like the knife-shaped money Harmony and Hermione had once seen in a Chinese history book, used during the Warring States era by several of the kingdoms. "and gold Galleons, there are seventeen Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle."

Hermione blinked "someone really liked prime numbers then, maybe to make it impossible to split money fairly."

Professor McGonagall smiled, though inwardly she was a bit envious of Filius given he was probably going to be this intellectual girl's head of house, and also for her quiet sister, whereas she was stuck with almost all the troublemakers of the school. "That is an interesting idea, Miss Granger, by the way, what you just said is the most popular opinion by far, at least among those very few who bother to hold an opinion on the subject."

The conversation continued for a few more minutes before they were out of questions and Professor McGonagall took her leave. The family was sitting around the kitchen table half an hour later. "Hermione, you first." Jane stated.

"Shouldn't Harmony get a chance to talk first? I mean, you always let me talk first and then let me off to read, and she has to wait all the time…" Hermione stopped as her twin gripped her shoulder tightly.

"I am your older sister and therefore have the duty to step aside for you." Harmony stated in a quiet voice that was only slightly less authoritative and commanding than her mother's. "Anything that's not physically dangerous for either of us, I will move aside for you." She smirked suddenly "In the future, if there is a boyfriend of mine that you want, I can hand him over too. After all, genetically speaking, your children are my children."

"Listen to your sister, Hermione." Dan said, he didn't like how Hermione felt favoured, it wasn't the case, this arrangement was mostly as Harmony had tangled herself into the Shepard family's line of work. Hermione also liked reading too much to want to hang around and listen during Harmony's extracurricular activities, because Harmony had pre-empted her younger sister by zoning out during Hermione's time to talk in the past and talking about stuff Hermione had no interest in afterward.

"Okay… Well, I think this is great! I never knew all that weird stuff I could do was all magic… I can't wait to get started studying!" She continued on, the family mostly smiling and nodding with a few occasional comments. Finally, she finished and looked expectantly at her older sister.

"I'm more concerned about our extracurricular classes, how will we continue while at Hogwarts? Hermione has piano, dance and art classes after all, that's going to be difficult, especially if she wants to keep it up."

"I think it would be best if you dropped those, at least for the duration of your Hogwarts education…" Jane trailed off, looking at her younger daughter.

"That's… okay I guess. Well, learning to use magic _would_ be more useful than piano in my future life and career…" Hermione was wearing a frown as she said this.

"The good thing is that we were always home-schooled, so it won't seem sudden and awkward that we changed our schooling arrangements." Harmony was turned toward her mother, at the head of the table, Hermione was seated beside her so she didn't see Harmony's wink, but their father, seated across from the twins, did. They all knew that the point was to make it seem like Harmony's extracurriculars could also be easily interrupted. In reality, Harmony was already trying in her head to cram her combat training schedule and plans over the next seven years into what time she had to be at home.

Too bad Arctic Combat Training couldn't be what she had planned, since that would take at least a month if not more, assuming she could make good time. She'd planned to make it from Eureka to Alert on Ellesmere Island, surviving only on the land and needing to avoid squads of soldiers, vehicles and aircraft searching for her. The goal was to take out as many of them as possible with practice rounds, and to make it to Alert in one piece without being captured or activating any of her SOS beacons due to distress, which would basically be forfeiting the match. Of course, there would be much training beforehand before that final trial, but Harmony found herself abruptly without the time to do it, so the idea was quickly scrapped.

Anyhow, even with that, what about strategic training? The dream she had chosen to pursue required she be a master tactician and strategist, but it seemed they would have to stand aside for now while she got herself an education in using her psychic powers. Perhaps she could truly get moving on that training once she was older instead of at a young age? It was a thought, at least. "Don't worry about my extracurriculars, Hermione, I can drop them easily enough. Just focus on your studies and I'll handle my problems on my own."

"But we're twins, we're supposed to take care of each other's problems as if they were our own."

"Genetically, my problems are equal to your own, but remember that you were always the more focused, hardworking one while I was and am someone who is too lazy to do the work properly," that was the side she showed to Hermione, never caring much about schoolwork and preferring to just plough on ahead in academics "We are so different, you need as much time as you can get to focus, while I have spare time to help you as is my duty as an older sibling. Give it up, Hermione, you're never going to change my mind about that."

The twins glared at each other until Hermione dropped her gaze in submission. "Alright, Harmony… I don't like it, but it is the way it always has been."

"I'm glad you understand, Hermione."

_Do I? No, I don't understand why Harmony has so many issues, and I'm not sure I want to understand…_ Hermione thought gloomily, deciding it was better to leave it be.

* * *

_July 31, 1991_

Harmony walked into the seedy-looking bar with her parents and sister and looked around. Jane, Dan and Harmony were cataloguing every person in the establishment and compiling a threat list while Hermione had raised eyebrows at the sketchiness of the place. Both adults were concealing A-WSM-10-25Bs under their clothes (Army, Weapon: SMG, 10mm, 25 calibre barrel). The gun had first been fielded for extremely close-range urban combat in the later stages of the Psychic Dominator Disaster, and it was kind of sad how the length of barrel was as much as the full-size MP5 (25 calibres) while the gun itself was almost as small as the MP5K (the short version of the more popular SMG). The reason why the MP5 was still more popular was that it was somewhat easier to reload, cheaper to make, less absurdly tiny (for the larger MP5s) and had rather less recoil (in the case of the MP5K). It fired 10mmx25mm SI-standard pistol rounds, which were rather high-powered especially fired out of the 25-calibre barrel, but resulted in tough barrel rise due to the magazine being far back in bull-pup configuration. Harmony had an A-WP-10-15D (entered service in 1987 with the need for a lighter, cheaper version of the old service pistol with an accessory rail underneath for small pieces of tactical equipment) in a pocket holster disguised as a legitimate pocket, it followed the traditional 10-15 configuration of SI's pistols, though it could also fit a 25-calibre barrel for longer-range work. The heavy, aerodynamic FMJ round fired was highly lethal to about 50 meters under very poor conditions and up to over 90 in good conditions.

Hermione was the only family member kept out of the loop as she'd shown no sign of interest in military affairs or command yet, and both her parents were kind of glad that was the case, as it was frightening enough with _one_ of their daughters joining the family business. This magical education thing would no doubt help both of them with their hopes and dreams, hence Jane and Dan had agreed on sending them to Hogwarts. They spoke to the bartender and he called for Tom. It turned out Tom was another bartender who was just finishing with pouring someone else a drink. "Ah, more muggle-born first years, I see!" The man was rather friendly, and he led them out to the courtyard beyond the bar, with only a trash can and a few weeds—in other words, no apparent threats, unless the trash can had a bomb inside or someone in it.

"Watch closely, it's the third brick up and the second across from the trash can that must be tapped with one's wand." Tom did as he said and tapped the wall three times. The brick wriggled and started developing a hole in the middle, a gateway of some sort. Jane's eyebrows rose higher and higher, she knew the location directly behind the Leaky Cauldron's premises (which were classified by the government) was filled with buildings, so unless this transition involved phasing through the phases of reality and venturing into experimental physics…

"Thank you." She said to Tom, gasping a little, that thought just now had made her start seeing double, instead of just the winding, cobbled street that had appeared beyond the gateway, Jane also saw where the non-magical buildings were built, and when she walked forward, she walked straight through objects that would have been there had this not been a gateway to another phase of reality. Her mind was forcibly seeing the objects, sensing them with mental might alone, it was a most surreal experience. The best part was that the magical people didn't at all question how this could be, merely labelling it magic and leaving it at that. That meant they would not be much of a threat in any major conflict. "Harmony, did that archway instantly shrink back into stone wall after we passed it?" She asked her older daughter, there was much to think about, and if that was a gateway through phases as she suspected it would of course not stay open long, just to conserve energy.

After passing numerous shops, Hermione excited over their contents and the other three scanning for threats and cataloguing threat levels, they approached a snowy white building that was clearly Gringotts. "It looks like the Taj Mahal's center building, without the onion roof." Hermione commented as they approached a set of large bronze doors.

"Yes, they built to impress." Harmony replied absent-mindedly, noting the two goblin guards standing flanking the bronze doors in uniforms of scarlet and gold. Harmony wondered if the uniforms were resistant to only magic, or could they protect against bullets too? IF that was the case and they needed to make a breakout then it was good that she'd brought a few blocks of C4… The second set of doors they faced had words engraved on them:

_Enter, stranger, but take heed  
Of what awaits the sin of greed,  
For those who take, but do not earn,  
Must pay most dearly in their turn.  
So if you seek beneath our floors  
A treasure that was never yours,  
Thief, you have been warned, beware  
Of finding more than treasure there._

In other words, "Don't fuck with us, or you'll be the one getting fucked." Two more goblins bowed them through the silver doors and they entered a vast marble hall. About a hundred more goblins sat on high stools behind the long counter, scribbling in large ledgers, weighing coins in brass scales, and examining gems through eyeglasses. A quick mental count said there were 41 doors leading from the main hall, and yet more goblins were showing people into and out of these. The whole family moved toward the counter, and Harmony began to do a running count of the goblins at the counter at any given time and their locations, slowly building a tactical map of the room in her mind. There were, after a minute of counting, 107… no, 106 now… back to 107… well, about 107 goblins behind the counter, which meant she wasn't carrying quite enough ammunition (two bullets short at 10 clips of 15 each, assuming a 70% kills-to-shots ratio). However, if there was a firefight, her family had in total more than enough ammunition stowed away in various places on their persons.

The exchange rate was fifty pounds to a galleon, so that was why a newspaper that Harmony had seen in a display window was only supposed to cost five Knuts, it was basically half a dollar… no, pound for a paper. It was fortunate that her mother had brought over twenty thousand pounds in hundred-pound bills to trade, obtaining four hundred galleons, expected to be enough for the twins for at least this year. They'd of course have to pay the tuition for Hogwarts as well, so Jane traded more money for that. Jane promised them (specifically Hermione) to open a vault for her when she came of age in the wizarding world i.e. turned 17, and could be responsible for her own finances. Harmony didn't bother asking for one, she had no intent on staying in the Wizarding World a moment longer than she had to for her education.

"Well, now that we have funds, where do you want to go first?"

"The Bookstore, that Flourish and Blotts place we passed earlier." Hermione rocked on her toes in excitement.

"I want to get my wand and then clothes, after that we can go buy a cauldron, the glass phials this list says, the brass scales, and the telescope. After dumping _everything_ back in the van we brought, we can come back for books, I suspect given Hermione's habits we will need to get rid of everything else first before we can physically carry the books back." Harmony stated simply. It was the obvious choice, after all, and since a wand was a wizard's main tool, they might as well get it first and foremost.

Hermione thought for a moment before deciding this would be a good idea "Okay, that sounds good too… let's go find the wand store…"

It wasn't hard, _Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C._, proclaimed a narrow, shabby shop's peeling gold sign. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the rather grimy window. A bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop, past the long shelves filled with wand boxes. Hermione was merely looking around at the boxes, but Harmony, who'd done some training in the past to resist psychic intrusion and sense ambient Psi-energy levels, felt almost claustrophobic with the energy levels around her buzzing in the air. She saw Mr. Ollivander come through the ranks of shelves "Good afternoon" he said in a soft voice "Buying a new wand?"

"Hello sir, yes, our daughters are buying new wands." Dan Granger replied politely.

"Hmm… let's get you measured…which is your wand arm, young lady?" He asked Hermione first since she appeared more nervous. It was always good to head off nerves before they could truly begin to manifest.

"Well, I'm right-handed." Hermione replied, and the tape measures began measuring away on their own and Harmony's hand twitched inside her pocket, moving briefly toward the safety switch of her gun but then relaxing as they didn't seem to be doing anything untoward to Hermione.

Mr. Ollivander on the other hand was talking away "Each Ollivander Wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons, along with a few less common cores. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand… that will do." The tape measures fell to the ground limply as Mr. Ollivander came back with a bunch of boxes "here, beech and unicorn hair, ten inches, try."

Hermione picked it up and waved it for only a moment before Mr. Ollivander snatched it back. "no, no, Ash and dragon heartstring, try."

About ten wands later "Vine wood and dragon heartstring, an unusual wood, ten and three-quarter inches, but I have quite a few unusual wands here…" Hermione felt a rush of clarity and warmth on touching the wand, and slashed it through the air, leaving a trail of red and gold sparks "oh yes, well, that is your wand, now for your sister…" the tap measure had already measured Harmony, and Ollivander fixed her with a calculating look for a moment before turning away to put the boxes of wand she already had out away and pulled other boxes from the shelves. "Let's begin."

* * *

It took until the pile of tried wands, in their boxes, reached above Mr. Ollivander's head (Dan had taken a very bored Hermione off to shop for everything for the girls, since the twins were the same size) that he laughed happily "Perhaps it is time to bring out the more exotic goods, some of which were imported. Here, Jarrah, an Australian hardwood, with a phoenix feather core, twelve inches, try."

"Ironwood, Unicorn tail hair, eleven and a half inches, try."

… more wands later…

"Yoki-onna bone, dragon heartstring, eleven inches, try."

… even more wands later…

"Unicorn horn with dragon heartstring core, the best of both worlds, nine inches?"

… once the second pile of tried wands, put on the desk next to them instead of the floor, reached Mr. Ollivander's shoulder…

"Hmm, I wonder…"

* * *

A/N: Alright, please vote (ideally after looking through her current character profile) on the two wands Harmony could get:

OPTION 1: Mythril (aka Alloyed Titanium), Thestral tail hair, eight inches, one of the very few Thestral-tail cored wands made after the Elder Wand was created. It will be useful for wedging powerful doors open, at least long enough to save someone or something. May or may not be broken in the process. Good for portraying Harmony as a modernization-minded, efficient soldier girl who will grow to be someone powerful and decisive in the future of the world.

OPTION 2: Yew and Dragon Heartstring, eight inches, an extremely dangerous combination. Whereas Hermione's vine and dragon heartstring wand (the sibling to Harmony's) brings the liveliness of vines and the volatile power of dragons together to bring life, Harmony's wand is best labelled a lethal implement of death and left at that. It is an excellent duelling weapon, but has a reputation for yew being prone to the Dark Arts. It requires extreme self-control and strength of mind, and is lethally hazardous when used by pretty much anyone else, which matches Harmony's future career choice which will be revealed with good time.

CHARACTER PROFILE: Harmony Jane Shepard (as of 09/01/1991, includes skill points breakdowns, ratings approximate)  
Titles: None  
Age: 11 Years  
Height: approx. 151 cm (growth rate 10 cm/year, rapid physical maturation noted)  
Mass: 60 kg or 132 lbs. (appears average, though, as it's mostly muscle)  
Specialty: Undetermined  
Small Arms Skill: 2/20 (Pistols: 2/4, Light Automatic Weapons 0/6, Sniping 0/6, Shotguns 0/4)  
Heavy Weapons Skill: 5/20 (Machine Guns: 1/3, Grenades/Grenade Launchers: 3/5, Mortars: 1/4, Rocket Launchers/Recoilless Rifles 0/4, Missiles: 0/4)  
Demolitions Skill: 3/20 (Vehicular Destruction: 1/4, Breaching Charges: 0/4, Traps: 1/6, Structural Demolition: 1/6)  
Vehicular Capability: 2/20 (Automobiles: 1/4, Armoured Fighting Vehicles: 0/4, Aircraft: 0/8, Watercraft: 1/4)  
Information Technology (Hacking): 1/20 (Malware Offence: 0/5, Malware Defence: 0/5 Data Taps: 1/5, Other IT: 0/5)  
Close Quarters Combat: 5/20 (Knife-Fighting: 2/4, Empty-handed: 1/4, Improvised Weaponry: 1/5, Unusual Environments Combat: 1/7)  
Stealth and Infiltration: 5/20 (Stealth: 2/5, Infiltration: 1/5, Intelligence Reporting: 2/5, Quiet Killing: 0/5)  
Psychic Warfare (not including "magic"): 3/20 (Offence: 0/7, Defence: 2/7, Support: 1/6)  
Sadism: 2/20 (Torture Skill: 1/5, Torture Satisfaction: 0/5, Killing Satisfaction: 0/4, Lack of Empathy/Emotion: 1/6)  
Command Skill: 4/20 (Self-Control Skill: 1/3, Tactical Command Skill: 2/7, Strategic Command Skill: 1/10)

My mental image of Harmony and Hermione (fully matured) is something best found on US Angel Corps Database (adult only site), the Personnel link (wiki format). I am uncertain who will most approach who, but I imagine Hermione with her hair sleeked straight (or if Jane's straight-hair genes ever overwhelm Dan's bushy-hair genes) would _physically_ most resemble Agent Princess (but quite a lot TALLER), but Harmony would lean more toward Agent Leaf or Agent Bamboo in looking more rough-hewn and combative. She's still brunette and appealing but with noticeably stunted bust growth relative to her untrained sister due to years of hard work. Said hard work will be depicted later in this fic (examples include clinging, numb and cold, to the outside of the castle wall in winter to plant new data taps and hardened electronics that can work through the EM interference of psychic activity). Note however, that at only age eleven, none of Harmony's skill ratings are above 25%, hence, not a Sue.

VOTE BY REVIEW!


	3. The Hunt For The Red Train

A/N: Yes, the chapter title is a play on _The Hunt for Red October_.

Combine wizarding reflexive psi-shielding against falls and physical injury and being the daughter of an Immortal and there will be a lot of damage that Harmony and Hermione will be absorbing… MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I just noticed that the user Oni on Rule 34 dot paheal dot net is a freaking GOD at drawing Bellatrix Black (just go on that site and put this (yes, the two underscore-linked words and the third word) in the search bar: Bellatrix_Lestrange Oni). His version of Bella, which looks more like Miranda from ME 2 to me than Bella form the movies (more wavy hair instead of curly, more attractive, etc.) is quite close to what I envisioned for Hannah Shepard, actually (only in some of the pictures where she's actually got a good smile and not an evil one). Specifically, I'm talking about the image where Luna and Hermione have turned the tables on her, that has about the right jug size too for comparison with Hannah. The one where she's anally doing Luna while yanking her hair so she can't reach a wand works too, but that's more my image of Miranda than Hannah. It should be excruciatingly obvious with time what the relationship of the two women is.

* * *

Chapter 3: The Hunt For The Red Train

"Well, that's an unusual wand." Hermione blinked down at the label on the box her sister was holding onto.

Harmony shrugged "Yes, well, I've pulled much crazier things than this before."

Hermione rolled her eyes "I already bought us robes and such, the only difference among us is bra size, really, I don't know how you were slower to develop, given you eat significantly more than I do…" She frowned at her sister's chest and then down at her own.

_If only you knew, Hermione, if only you could know…_ Harmony thought simply. "Well, anything we haven't bought yet?"

"Well…"

…

…Harmony really should have known better than to give her twin another chance to visit the bookstore, espcially given it was one Hermione had only been to once so far.

* * *

"Mom, Dad, I need to do some experiments." Harmony had said as she felt the dragon-skin protective gloves she had bought. Fortunately, as her hands were essentially full-sized (Shepard kids grew up linearly, so they were very undersized in their younger years but still matured earlier than most) she would at most have to buy one more pair over the years to maintain a fit, and if these things were as durable as the shop claimed they were, there were many possibilities for them in terms of infantry body armour. Of course, given the lack of dragon reports and the fact that it was physically possible for the Ministry of Magic to hush sightings up, there weren't many wild dragons, and wizarding law strictly forbade slaying of dragons—not to mention dragon slayers tended to earn the ire of entire flocks, which was obviously very bad for one's life expectancy.

So the point was to test the material, study it, and imitate it to the best of technology's abilities. Now that they were back home they had access to testing facilities. They tested the gloves at home, as the ridiculous International Statute of Secrecy meant wizarding inventions and artefacts could not be allowed into muggle hands and they'd probably be stolen by wizards if they were given to an actual research group. Fortunately the facilities they had access to were quite extensive and they managed to test high explosives, kinetic penetrators, and High Explosive Anti-Tank rounds (which used a beam of molten, high-speed metal for actual penetration) . They also tested incendiary resistance and chemical resistance.

The conclusions obtained were quite intriguing, the dragon skin was almost fully resistant to anything short of a 12.5mm AP round, dissipating the impact energy effectively over the entire surface, which meant a full-sized dragon's energy dispersion (over a MUCH larger surface) would likely be enough to take a 110mm tank shell and possibly survive. It also appeared to harden or at least become less pliable whenever subjected to sudden impacts. High explosives were effective at compromising the skin's structural integrity, but would need a second shot to break through the damaged skin unless the first blast was immensely large (upward of 50 kilograms of TNT). HEAT rounds were noted to be the most effective, but even then the particle stream was eroded significantly by just the glove and required over 350mm RHAe penetration to punch through both sides of the glove on the alpha strike (200mm RHAe did it for a single layer of glove, in a face-on hit). However, it was found that follow-up strikes were much more effective, so much so that two 75mm RHAe penetration rounds (High Explosive Dual Purpsoe fro Harmony's grenade launcher) were enough to weaken the skin so much a finger could be pushed through it, though it had held against the concussive blows. The dragon skin was understandably almost immune to incendiary effects and chemical attack, which meant it had great potential as body armour. The next thing was to figure out its structure and imitate it. It was less effective against kinetic penetrators than explosives, but it was still godly for the weight and thickness involved

That analysis meant use of several optical microscopes in assorted wavelengths, plus scanning and transmission electron microscopes. The conclusion was that dragon skin was mostly made of small scales of ceramic composite, with specific groove and dent patterns in the ceramic deposition patterns where protein fibres were emplaced for maximum crush resistance or breaking resistance. Dragon hide had three layers of these tiny "scales" and a surface layer of protective scaling that shielded the main protective layers from weathering. There was also a psychic energy field permeating the hide that was self-stable, but which seemed like it was a natural part of the hide, helping in repairing the material on its own without external input. However, the EM signature of that field had been dropping steadily since testing really began, but only while the material was repairing itself. Perhaps it needed a little recharge of psychic energy once in a while? For some reason, it seemed the glove could regain even lost MASS, by some currently-incomprehensible mechanism. The repairing was also going to be impossible to recreate for any technological imitation currently possible, but perhaps with time and progress…

There were other things to be investigated, such as how wands worked, but those didn't give any real results… even though Harmony and Hermione were both providing lots of experimental data.

* * *

_August 26-30, 1991_

It turned out that setting up shop was a lot harder than Harmony had expected, mapping out sniper locations and access routes through the compound that was King's Cross, stealing and copying schematics of the station, etc. had to wait a bit. Two days had been spent setting up base camps and fall-back points and routes, shaking MI5 tails, figuring out guard watch schedules and security camera angles, hacking into the network, etc. Now she had to figure out the best way to steal those schematics, and where the hell Platform 9.75 could possibly fit. Her mother thought it was another phased-out-of-our-reality thing, but she wasn't so sure…

She managed to do five days of recon, from the 26th to the 30th, before she had to start packing up and go home, and she'd detected absolutely no definitive trace of Platform 9.75, maybe it just wasn't active this time of year. However, she had detected enough IR residue and radar anomalies that she could _almost_ conclude that platform 9.75 did exist and was only hidden from sight by a complicated harmonic field set up by a brain or brains.

A click of the lock and soft rustle of carpeting against the door was all the warning she had to wake up from where she was sleeping, seated on the floor, her back against the wall of the smaller bedroom of the apartment she had been using to watch King's Cross. It seemed that she hadn't lost the tails as thoroughly as she had hoped. She had gotten the last of the equipment out of this place a couple hours back, and was just taking advantage of the soft carpet of this kiddie room to take a nap. Beds were too noisy to sleep on, and so were couches, whereas the floor, in most places, didn't make much noise as you got up. The enemy had finally caught up, it seemed. She had chosen this room since the window was, though small, not too far above the ground, so if it was common burglars she could escape that way. The question was whether or not they had snipers covering the outside of the building and people in the security systems of the building. _Of course they did…_ she thought to herself as she yanked the pin off a standard fragmentation grenade, cooked it for a second in her combat-gloved hand, and bounced it into the living room. It wasn't enough time for the hostiles to take cover, but it was sure enough time to grab the arm of the first surprised, ski-masked hostile who'd just started coming around the corner to her current room, wrench it enough he stumbled, and put a round through his head with her silenced gun.

She holstered her pistol, cooked two grenades at the same time and chucked both into the living room before making her exit via using her pistol to gun down the other three hostiles with a speed her Aunt Tanya, who had trained her in pistol skills, wouldn't have been too disappointed by. She put a bullet in the head of each of the downed hostiles (even the two who'd apparently been killed by her grenades) before she could move out, using a mirror to look around the corners before advancing toward the fire exits. She went two floors up, then took the elevator down to the second floor. It was likely that these were not MI5, her mother had an agreement with MI5, mostly dictated by the latter's consideration of the SI Missile Submarines of the North Atlantic. Jane didn't even have to refer to them, merely having the subs, despite those mostly being under the command of her sister, was enough.

Harmony took the stairs to the underground parking and ran to a car (owned by a different family than the one whose home she'd just wrecked) whose keys she'd jacked and made a replica of, firing up the engine and pulling out of the parking spot, scraping the side of the car a bit but within acceptable tolerances. Reaching the exit she leaned far enough sideways she was looking out from the two mirrors she'd set up on the passenger side of the dashboard, but the expected shower of broken windshield glass from sniper rounds or machine-gun fire smashing into the vehicle never came.

Maybe those ski masks weren't just to disguise the men as burglars? Maybe they actually were burglars unlucky enough to break into her hideout, given they didn't seem armed enough? It was irrelevant. She had to ditch the vehicle somewhere and meet up with the evac chopper. Fortunately, the roads were relatively clear, so she didn't scrape anything or hit anything as she drove along hunkered down as far as she could while still being able to have full visibility. It was unlikely that she would get sniped after more than three blocks or so, surely professionals would be more skilled than that. However, better safe than dead…

She ditched the escape vehicle by parking the car in the parking lot outside a fairly distant subways station, paying two days' parking fee, putting the slip on the dashboard (her combat gloves prevented fingerprinting), and leaving the keys under the back seat. Following this, she waited a moment before disembarking, walking through the lot, entering the station, and thus coming into view of its cameras. She would report the car to police later, once she was well clear of the scene, in the form of an anonymous phone call. Given the police vehicles that had passed around her (she sat up when she heard them to appear less suspicious, as she was tall enough to pass for an adult to the casual observer) the police had received phone calls about the explosions. It was fortunate that SI-made firearms were so common and so popular, among legitimate and illegitimate armed forces alike, otherwise it would have hinted as to her identity… and that could not do. Her training was to be better than that, despite the fact that the mission was inconclusive and thus essentially a failure. She had seen nobody really disappear from her extensive camera coverage into what could seem to be magic, and not detected any conclusive signatures for Platform 9.75.

Interestingly, it seemed that the phased-out objects could still transmit, at least in the non-visible wavelengths, to the rest of the world. It seemed it was a mostly material phasing, not a full emissions phasing as well. However, that still didn't explain the total lack of a thermal bloom from the Hogwarts Express, if it was a train, it should at least throw off enough heat to be vaguely detectable by her high-end military sensors given how she could sort of see Platform 9.75. Of course, that could be her brain trying to believe it was there…

* * *

Her brain also chose this time to recall the first time she had killed a person, it was during an attack on her home in 1989 when only her dad and her were at home, one of the attackers had seized her by the wrist after breaking it with a hard kick from his loafers once she was no longer able to keep up in unarmed hand-to-hand. While she gritted her teeth so hard from the pain they squeaked, she seized her newest accessory, a serrated-bladed tungsten carbide combat knife, from her pocket holster with her other hand and whipped it around fast enough to hack into the side of the man's neck before he could block.

His plan to block her fist about ten centimetres from his neck failed as the knife punched through his jugular vein and carotid artery on that side, sending blood spraying out onto the ground as he clutched at his throat, falling on his side and gurgling incomprehensibly. Harmony kicked the silenced pistol he'd dropped before, when she'd taken him by surprise, away from him, then dived and rolled for it herself just in case he had something up his sleeve, as training told her to do.

She snapped the gun up, spun, put a bullet in the man's head just in case, then moved out as stealthily as she could, wincing silently as her broken wrist complained at the sudden movements. It was lucky that she was able to take the recoil of the silenced pistol now with a single hand… She saw her father fighting two men at the same time and holding them off, if barely, and with a trembling hand she levelled her pistol and fired twice. Both men collapsed, and Dan Granger turned to see his baby girl standing in the doorway with one hand hanging limply and the other clutching a silenced pistol, the front of her blue shirt dyed a deep purple by the blood that had stained her.

She'd gone back to her room, dropped the gun, curled up in the puddle of blood on the floor and rocked back and forth, mumbling hysterically until she was taken to the nearest SI-run hospital (this was to keep things quiet, a few Spec Ops troops were called in to clean up the house). Dan had come in a moment later (having shot the two men in the head to make sure) and tried to comfort her but she seemed completely numb. The dentist had had to learn how to fight and kill if he wanted to be with Jane Shepard, but he didn't regret any of it as long it was to keep their family safe, or so he said when Harmony asked him about how he could bear to kill so easily. Hermione visited her sister in hospital, and the younger twin was very worried about her older sister's utterly dead expression.

Jane was the last to actually visit her daughter (in terms of spending private time together) but she spoke of the burden of the throne, how it was such a thin line between doing what was right and making excuses for oneself, how hard it was to make change in the world, and so on. At the end of it, she affixed her older daughter with a sad look "do you understand now? You can still back out, you still have years in which you can decide to back out of this nightmare that we more decent rulers find ourselves trapped in for all our lives."

Harmony had blinked and suddenly it had seemed the world was back in focus "Yes, mother, you are right… I see now. Thank you." She reached out for a hug that her mother gladly gave her.

"Don't worry, even if you didn't agree, you'd still be my baby girl. That'll never change. I'll still be happy for you and proud of you no matter what you choose to do."

"Hallelujah, tell me something I don't know." Both mother and daughter chuckled at that.

* * *

Harmony's mind called her back to the present and returned to the topic of the Platform. They would have to see, Harmony decided, they would have to show up at King's Cross on September 1 and watch for other wizarding families. The most important trait would be an owl, since it was the most popular wizarding pet and probably the most useful. Harmony herself had obtained a tiny, enthusiastic owl that she'd named Flare. That was because it was intended to be a countermeasure flare, to distract mail intercept attempts and/or dodge them, while school owls from the Owlery carried Harmony's real post, should such security measures ever be necessary. The secure, hardened satellite uplink radio she brought would hopefully be powerful enough to penetrate the jamming field of Hogwarts, at the very least the field in the Hogwarts Express so that the route could be tracked. That way, if the radio wasn't powerful enough to get a clear signal to the satellites, they could set up radio uplink towers (i.e. prefab radar installations) near Hogwarts to pick up her signal.

They noticed the first people with owls around ten o'clock, an hour before the train was due to leave. The wizards and witches, obvious with their cloaks or clumsy attempts at muggle dress, hurried toward the support beam at the head of the junction of platform nine and ten… and then, rather abruptly, simply weren't there anymore. Harmony frowned at this, while Jane observed that "Perhaps you must walk through the wall, which is a hidden gateway through the phases of the universe to the set of phases where the Hogwarts Express is currently situated."

"It appears likely." Hermione stated as they watched another family disappear through the gateway apparently unnoticed by the muggles around them, probably as the average person paid little attention to anything but themselves, but also as there was likely a psychic compulsion field to direct people's attention elsewhere.

"Alright, let's try it, hold our hands, dears, we don't want to be left behind in case only magical people can get through…" Jane and Harmony paired up behind her trolley and Dan and Hermione paired up behind her big trunk. Both girls had been bought fancy trunks with extra compartments and more space than they apparently contained. Hermione had filled hers up with books, extra potion ingredients, and clothes. Harmony did the same, but with a different trunk, fewer extra books and different clothes. Namely, she brought several sets of combat uniforms in the form of two sets of summer gear and two sets of winter gear. The trunk did not interfere with inactive electronics, so Harmony used the extra space that Hermione was going to use for more books in later years for storage of the high-powered satellite radio set and its solar panel that she was going to bring.

She had purchased the trunk in the shop with the most durable reinforced compartment (though it had one less compartment than Hermione's, the last one was a full _room_ reinforced against explosions and fires) unlike Hermione who didn't want anything really special. These two compartments served to hold many, many crates of filled-up pistol clips, loose pistol ammunition, grenade launcher rounds, and grenades. It also held a number of additional firearms in case hers were lost or broken beyond repair by the parts that resided in a separate crate. Of course, she'd have to establish small ammunition caches all over Hogwarts to be safe, but that could wait until maybe second year given they weren't expecting to use any of it really soon. She'd included all sorts of rounds, including white phosphorus slugs for the grenade launcher, and also about a hundred quarter-kilogram C4 bricks, when she packed the compartment she called her "Armoury" which she actually adding more locking mechanisms to.

The twins walked with their parents toward the barrier and, by basically leaning their carts against the barrier (just in case it didn't work, they wanted to remain nondescript), passed through smoothly onto a train platform with Victorian-style architecture. There was a large red and black steam engine next to it, with Hogwarts Express painted proudly on it in gold letters. "Alright, let's get our stuff onboard." Harmony muttered as she picked up her trunk and Hermione did the same (both were charmed trunks that included some sort of anti-gravity field). After they did that, they poked their heads out of their compartment window and chattered with their parents about all sorts of things, Harmony again stepping aside to give Hermione most of the conversation, as she knew she would possibly have a secure radio uplink while that was impossible for Hermione.

It turned out, after the train began moving, that Hermione was none too happy about this. She had noticed her sister's act of too often giving her the helm on the conversation and told Harmony off for it. Harmony simply said that "you have more to say to them than I do." This was, of course, only the truth, as Harmony did not see any benefit whatsoever about lying to her sister. Harmony knew full well that her current choice of future career it was highly unlikely that she would bump into a nice, clever guy who wasn't out for her money, information, or life. Her father had been astonishingly lucky her mother decided he was adequate, but her mother was also fortunate that her father wasn't some secret agent of any sort. Given this outlook on her chances with regards to future partners, the most important people to her were and always would be her family, so unless it was to save lives, alienating them would be completely inexcusable. "Hermione, I'm sorry about how you feel like I' favouring you too much, believe me, I chatter so much with Mom and Dad when you're out at classes that you would die of boredom if you had to listen in."

"You've told me that before." Hermione sighed. "Alright, I'll keep from prying into whatever secrets you share with Mom and Dad…" She went back to her copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ while Harmony got moving on finishing the reading of her school books. Given the twins' reading speed, Hermione had no doubt read all of them five or more times already…

It was around 1230 hours that the lunch trolley came around. Both girls declined the assortment of snacks and sweets it offered, opting to eat the healthier food they'd brought with them. Jane Shepard was actually good at cooking, unlike Hannah whose record of successfully burnt substances extended to even water, so the sandwiches she'd packed for them were quite excellent. The twins ate every bite and chucked their trash in the can under the small table in the middle of their compartment..

About half an hour after they finished eating and ten minutes after they changed their clothes for witches' robes (i.e. 10 minutes after they unlocked their door), the compartment door opened and Hermione saw Harmony's left hand twitch a little bit. A round-faced boy had just poked his head in. "Uh, hello, sorry for intruding, have you seen a toad wandering around?"

"No, did you lose one?" Hermione asked, shutting her book after putting a bookmark in it and standing up, the boy nodded in response "I can help you look for it. My name is Hermione, this is Harmony, my sister." Harmony held up a hand and smiled a little in greeting.

"I'm Neville, nice to meet you." They shook hands at that.

"You mean _we_ can help look for it, Hermione, I'm tired of sitting anyways." Harmony said, hoping Hermione hadn't caught her earlier instinctive twitch toward one of the two pistols she was currently carrying. The grenade launcher she had was currently compacted and resided on the small of her back, attached to two belt clips. She'd make access to it in robes easier later, when she could find some privacy to adjust her clothes.

Hermione went straight to the next compartment over, with Neville trudging along and Harmony following silently like a wraith "Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," Hermione said to the two boys sitting inside, one with untidy black hair and the other with orange hair that some people would call red. Harmony knew what real red hair looked like, and this boy didn't even come close to the rich, glossy wine red Jane Shepard's hair was.

"We've already told him we haven't seen it," the orange-head/redhead replied sharply, he was also holding a wand in mid-air as if about to perform a spell. Hermione obviously wasn't listening to him but watching the wand, which Harmony had been watching as a part of standard threat assessment all along.

"Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it, then." Hermione suggested, sitting down. The redhead looked taken aback by this, and Harmony hardly blamed him given her sister was intruding a bit.

"Er…all right." The boy cleared his throat before starting "Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow." He waved his wand, but nothing happened. The rat he was pointing the wand at stayed grey and fast asleep.

"Are you sure that's a real spell?" Hermione said in such a snobby, bossy tone that Harmony shot her a glare that she didn't catch. "Well, it's not very good, is it? I've tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard—I've learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough—I'm Hermione Granger and this is my sister Harmony Shepard, by the way, who are you?" Hermione managed to say all that in one breath.

The redhead looked stunned and the black-haired boy looked at his friend uneasily, obviously not having learnt his books by heart either, kind of like Harmony herself. After all, in the earlier days of August she had a lot of last-minute training to do so she could only study at night… "I'm Ron Weasley." the redhead muttered.

"Harry Potter." said the boy with the messy black hair.

"Are you really?" asked Hermione, leaning forward in her seat. "I know all about you, of course—I got a few extra books for background reading, and you're in _Modern Magical History_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ and _Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century_." Harmony merely nodded silently in agreement, looking around discreetly to ensure the hallway was still clear of potential hostiles.

"Am I?" said Harry, looking a bit dazed by this revelation, so that meant he didn't know of his fame or of magic. But that would mean he was raised separate from all knowledge of psychics, and whoever he had lived with had probably even refused to tell him about the Psychic Dominator Disaster less than a decade back for fear of its supposed "abnormality". There were bigots everywhere, it seemed, and it was unsurprising so many people had problems with magic given Jesus had supposedly made statements against it.

"Goodness, didn't you know, I'd have found out everything I could if it was me," said Hermione. "Do either of you know what House you'll be in? I've been asking around, and I hope I'm in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it, but I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn't be too bad… Anyway, we'd better go and look for Neville's toad. You two had better change, you know, I expect we'll be there soon."

They searched the train for some time, but as they were returning to their compartment, they heard a commotion coming from Harry and Ron's compartment. A tall, slim blond boy rushed out, along with two burly bodyguard-types, and fled upon the sound of the group's approaching footsteps. Seeing the boys' sweets all over the floor and Ron picking up his rat by the tail, Hermione remarked "What has been going on?"

"I think he's been knocked out." Ron said to Harry before looking closer at the rat. "No, I don't believe it, he's gone back to sleep!" He suddenly raised his head toward Harry "You've met Malfoy before?"

Harry explained about their meeting in Diagon Alley, in the robe shop. Harmony listened in with her sister quietly, apparently there were many bigots among the wizards as well… well then it was their own problem.

"I've heard of his family," Ron growled darkly. "They were some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says Malfoy's father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side." He turned to Hermione. "Can we help you with something?"

Hermione sighed "You'd better hurry up and put your robes on, I've just been up to the front to ask the conductor, and he says we're nearly there. You haven't been fighting, have you? You'll be in trouble before we even get there!"

"Scabbers has been fighting, not us," said Ron, scowling at her. "Would you mind leaving while we change?"

Hermione shrugged "All right — I only came in here because people outside are behaving very childishly, racing up and down the corridors," she sniffed indignantly "And you've got dirt on your nose, by the way, did you know?"

Harmony as now severely questioning Hermione's social skills. Ron glared at Hermione as she left, as Harmony saw out of the corner of her eye. A voice echoed through the train all of a sudden "We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes' time. Please leave your luggage on the train. It will be taken to the school separately." The train was soon slowing down and finally stopped, people milling out onto a tiny, dark platform in the night. Hermione was among the first out, and Harmony had to follow her twin, in case there was anything Hermione couldn't handle.

A booming, friendly voice calling for first years attracted Harmony's attention as soon as she got off the train. A giant of a man holding a large oil lantern loomed over the crowd, calling for first-year students while the other years trooped up to a number of carriages pulled by great, black, skeletal winged horses… Thestrals.

"C'mon, follow me—any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me!" the very large man called as the station emptied and he turned to guide them away.

Hermione was slipping occasionally or stumbling, as were most of the other students, but Harmony barely felt the steep, narrow path they were following the giant over. The two sides of the path were very dark, suggesting the presence of thick forest, especially given the sounds around them. Neville, the boy who'd lost his toad before (they'd found Trevor in the end), sniffled a couple times.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec," the giant man called over his shoulder, "jus' round this bend here."

There was a loud "Oooooh!" form the gaggle of forty or so first-years. The narrow path had opened onto a beachhead area bordering a great dark lake, perched atop a hill on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers. Hermione started whispering "What architectural style is that? I can't place it…"

"I read a lot less history than you, do you think I can identify it?" Harmony asked back.

"Right… it doesn't matter, it's probably some wizarding style we wouldn't find in our textbooks anyhow."

"No more'n four to a boat!" Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore. Harmony and Hermione boarded the same boat as Harry and Ron. "Everyone in?" Hagrid shouted a few minutes later, in a boat by himself "Right, then… FORWARD!" The fleet of little boats moved off all at once, accelerating smoothly and maintaining velocity across the relatively smooth surface of the lake, which reflected the many lights of the castle ahead. They sailed closer and closer to a cliff that rested between them and the castle, and Hagrid ordered "Heads down!" as the first boats reached the cliff. Passing through a curtain of ivy hiding an opening in the cliff, the fleet was carried along a dark tunnel that eventually reached a kind of underground harbour, where they disembarked onto a rocky beach of pebbles. After Neville got his toad back thanks to the giant, they made their way up a passageway that led them up onto smooth, damp grass right in front of the main doors of the castle, which appeared to be made of oak.

"Everyone here? You there, still got your toad?" The giant asked before raising a large fist and banging on the door three times.

* * *

A/N: No, Harmony's owl is NOT Pig. It is female, larger than Pig, but just as excitable, they are, in fact, the same breed of owl.

VOTE ON HARMONY'S WAND (if you haven't already) BY REVIEW:

Option 1: Alloyed Titanium (aka Mythril), Thestral tail hair, eight inches, very exotic core and material. Suited to a modernization-minded, efficient soldier-girl. Will be useful for jamming open doors and as a crowbar.

Option 2: Yew and Dragon Heartstring, eight inches, a highly explosive combination, only feasible for those with extreme self-discipline, and extremely lethal in combat. Almost no other can wield it due to the volatility of the combination of materials, just as Harmony's future career is one almost no other can wield.

REVIEW!


	4. Courage vs Ambition

A/N: This is a quick and short update, I probably should write two chaps at a time before updating, to balance out the lengths a bit, my shortest chapter ever by far at only 2700 or so words, due to the need for suspense.

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Chapter 4: Courage vs. Ambition

Professor McGonagall was the one to open the door, and took them from there with the exchange of a few words with "Hagrid". Harmony actually gaped for a moment at the opulent grandeur of the Entrance Hall, the ceiling of which hung at least twenty meters over their heads. No wonder the Castle seemed hideously over-sized for the number of inhabitants… The stone walls were lit with torches, but they seemed to be supplied from the inside by some fuel source… probably just the raw energy discharge of magic which should resemble flames… It could be some other manner of light, for the hall was lit rather brightly, but those torches couldn't possibly give off this much ambient light…

The marble stiarcase leading to the upper floors was truly magnificent, Harmony decided in awe, but then was struck by a sudden horror. September 1, 1991 was a SUNDAY, and that meant classes started the very next day! How were they to find their way through such a huge castle and be on-time for all their classes on their first real day here? "Hermione, we have classes _tomorrow_, how are we supposed to make sure we don't get lost in this castle?" She blurted out before she could control herself. _Oh fuck, I just managed to get my more studious twin another reason to panic…_

Hermione's eyes seemed to bug out and she gaped in silent horror at the idea of being late to classes as Professor McGonagall led them across the flagged stone floor. The drone of hundreds of voices was coming from several huge doors to their right, probably where the rest of the school was, and if her memory of castles was correct, the Great Hall, but the Professor showed them into a small, empty chamber off the hall. The youngsters crowded in, standing rather closer together than they would usually have liked given their state of nerves, peering about nervously. Harmony wondered idly what room they had used in decades past, before the Great Wizarding War as the old, kindly Mr. Black had called it. Henry Black had stayed in touch for the past few decades with the Shepard family and told Harmony that there used to be eight to twelve students per dormitory, and that dorms were divided between boys and girls, years, and houses. He would not, however, tell Harmony how the sorting of houses was to occur, only telling her that it was a test of character. Now, there were maybe forty or so students in here, five per dorm per year per house, which meant they'd had to crowd twice as many here each year if they'd used this room in the past. That would have been quite horribly crowded…

"Welcome to Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room." Harmony was grinning, thinking this was highly unlikely, while Hermione was nodding at what Professor McGonagall was saying "The four Houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your House points, while any rule-breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House cup, a great honour. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours. The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting."

Her eyes lingered on something somewhere to Harmony's left, on Neville's cloak fastened under his left ear and Ron's smudged nose, but Harmony didn't notice the moment, she was too busy wondering exactly what the sorting could be. "I shall return when we are ready for you," said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly."

"How exactly do they sort us into Houses?" Harry, somewhere to Harmony's left, asked Ron. She perked up and listened in, as this could be useful intel to have.

"Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking."

Harmony wasn't sure who Fred was, but chances were that yes, he was joking. There were no longer enough youngsters that some were expendable, since as far as she knew of wizarding history, this had to be the lowest recruitment levels seen in nearly three or four hundred years. Hermione, to Harmony's right, was whispering to her very fast about all the spells she'd learned and wondering which one she'd need. Harmony sighed and hugged her sister "It'll be okay, Hermione, it can't be that hard if they're expecting muggle-born students to do it."

However, Harmony jumped about half a meter in the air and Hermione gasped in shock as about twenty ghosts streamed through the back wall, pearly-white and slightly transparent. They glided across the room talking to each other and not taking notice of the first-years due to their heated debate. A fat little monk was saying "Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance —"

A ghost wearing a ruff and tights snorted "My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost—I say, what are you all doing here?" He seemed to have just noticed the first-years.

Harmony was too busy being surprised at the presence (and existence for that matter) of the ghosts to do much of anything, and no one else answered either.

"New students!" said the Fat Friar, smiling around at them. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?" Harmony nodded mutely, wondering how, if they were incorporeal, ghosts could speak. She also wondered just how useful they would be as scouts, though they didn't seem to move very fast… "Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!" said the Friar. "My old House, you know."

"Move along now," said a sharp voice, Professor McGonagall's voice. "The Sorting Ceremony's

about to start." One by one, the ghosts floated away through the opposite wall from where they had entered. "Now, form a line and follow me."

Numbly, the gaggle of eleven-year-olds walked after her out of the room, across the Entrance Hall, and through a set of double doors into the Great Hall. Harmony was again gaping like an idiot, as were most of the rest of the first-years. Thousands of candles hovered over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting, with golden plates and goblets laid before them. At the top of the hall, another long table housed the teachers. The first-years were led up to line up along this table, facing the crowd, which included both students and a few ghosts. Harmony looked up and saw a velvety black ceiling with stars sprinkled over it "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in _Hogwarts: A History_." Hermione told her when she noticed Harmony looking up.

"That's quite interesting, I wonder if it looks different from different angles."

"No, it looks like the sky outside, but given the light level in here we'd never see the stars if they were as dim as they're supposed to be."

The twins watched as Professor McGonagall silently set down a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard's hat, an extremely filthy, patched and frayed wizard's hat. "How many people have gotten head lice from that hat?" She asked Hermione.

"I don't know, probably many, many people… maybe we have to get a rabbit out of it…" She trailed off as a rip near the rim of the hat opened and it began to sing. By the time it was finished, Harmony thought she could be in any of the houses, but she wanted to be in the same house as her sister, and definitely not in Slytherin despite her ambitions.

"So we've just got to try on the hat!" Ron, somewhere to their right now, whispered to Harry. "I'll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll."

Harmony barely succeeded in not bursting out in laughter. Having first-years take on a troll? Really?

Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a roll of parchment which was probably a name list. "When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," she said. "Abbott, Hannah!"A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes (quite odd given the hat seemed to be about right for Harmony and Hermione's head size), and sat down. A moment's pause later…

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat. The table on the center right (relative to the entrance of the Great Hall and on the left-hand-side from the perspective of the Head Table) with the yellow and black colours cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down there. Harry saw the ghost of the Fat Friar waving merrily at her.

"Bones, Susan!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat again, and Susan scurried off to sit next to Hannah.

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

The table second from the left clapped this time, but without cheering, as apparently the studious students didn't like to cheer much. Several Ravenclaws stood up to shake hands with the new kid as he joined them. "Brocklehurst, Mandy" went to Ravenclaw too, but "Brown, Lavender" became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with cheers. Two red-headed kids, more thickset than Ron but about the same height despite being older, were cat-calling.

"Bulstrode, Millicent" then became a Slytherin. Perhaps it was Harmony's imagination, after all she'd heard about Slytherin, but she thought they looked like an unpleasant lot. She also took note of the different amounts of time the hat took to make a decision. She was shocked out of her thoughts by Professor McGonagall "Granger, Hermione!" Hermione almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat eagerly on her head.

"GRYFFINDOR!" shouted the hat. Ron groaned somewhere to Harmony's right, but she ignored him, instead opting to clap for her twin, which drew a few curious glances as the others in the line were all too nervous to do any clapping. She was now decided that she WOULD go to Gryffindor.

Neville was sorted into Gryffindor, and had to run back to the stool as he'd run off with the hat still on his head. The blonde boy who they'd seen rushing out of Harry and Ron's compartment on the train, apparently named Draco Malfoy, went to Slytherin almost instantly, and a bunch more people passed before the next person Harmony recognized, Harry Potter, was called.

Whispers broke out all over the Great Hall as Harry stepped forward, it took the hat most of a minute to decide that he should go to Gryffindor, where he got the loudest cheer yet heard, the redheaded twins from earlier jumping up and down shouting "We got Potter! We got Potter!" while another redhead, looking to be another Weasley sibling, was shaking Harry's hand. From the badge on his chest, Harmony figured he was someone of some rank above the rest of the students. There were only five people left to be sorted now, herself, a black boy even taller than Ron, a rather nondescript girl, Ron, another tall, olive-skinned boy with high cheekbones and long, slanting eyes.

"Shepard, Harmony!"

She noticed that people were still busy buzzing about the famous Harry Potter. According to what her mother and Aunt Tanya had taught, this was usually good as it could in some situations allow her to build up her strength and forces in secrecy. Walking up to the stool, she picked up the hat and dropped it on her head before sitting down.

"Well, well, what have we here? Clever, yes, definitely, studious… hardworking… ambitious, to be sure, almost vaulting ambition…"

Harmony frowned up at the rim of the hat that was speaking to her telepathically _not Slytherin, not Slytherin_, she thought bitterly.

"You are suited to two houses above the others, and one of them, probably your best match, is Slytherin. Besides, there hasn't been a Muggle-born student in Slytherin in about a century. It's nothing special for a muggle-born to succeed in any other house. Don't you want to be known as the girl who succeeded in Slytherin and became the very best, like no one ever was? You have more than enough intelligence to do it…"

_No, I don't want to be known for anything in particular during my school years, I just want to learn as much as I possibly can and get this over with so I can get to work building my career. Besides, what happened to the last muggle-born kids who went to Slytherin? You can be honest, I've done a lot of pretty nasty stuff myself, killing included._

"My dear, you are just digging your own grave… you sound more Slytherin by the moment from what I can hear and what I can see of your personality traits. As for the previous muggle-born students, well, since you wanted honesty, the last one drowned himself in the lake in his seventh year, the one before that got through okay, but the girl before her was put into St. Mungo's Hospital Mental Health Ward after she was gang-raped almost to death."

_If you put me into Slytherin the school will have to find a new Sorting Hat, you are patched and frayed, and incredibly filthy, and that means you are destructible, and if you put me into Slytherin I WILL burn you. Also, what happened to the men who raped the third last muggle-born?_

"Well, I suppose that sort of foolish courage sounds just like your second-best match, but seriously, child, you could be a great Slytherin… you'd make so many connections there… and you, unlike the others, are strong enough to pull it off."

_No I would not make connections, I would just be an outcast. Besides, I don't need connections in the wizarding world. You didn't answer my question about the rapists._

"Are you sure about that?"

… _and YOU could be a great pile of ash. ANSWER MY QUESTION ABOUT THAT CASE!_

"Nothing happened to them. They had enough wealth and power to get off with only some fines that they could handle, such is the benefit of being parts of Most Ancient and Noble Houses or being closely affiliated with them."

_Ah, then you're suggesting that I go into a house of power-mad lunatics who would probably try to rape me to death. Unless you want a massacre of blood supremacists and their lackeys in this school, you had better put me in the other house I'm suited to._

"I think I got the point already, but do I care? Not really, Miss Gutsy. Anyways, you'll thank me for this later." The Hat's mouth opened and it shouted one word to the Great Hall. Harmony rolled her eyes and put the Hat back down on the stool before walking over to her House Table by a wall of the Great Hall.

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A/N: WHICH HOUSE SHOULD HARMONY BE IN? Slytherin or Gryffindor? If it's Slytherin, expect cruel pranks and having to learn to live basically on the run. In Gryffindor, expect her to be Hermione's shadow, practically.

REVIEW! Ideally with a vote. I don't mind counting reviews for this given I don't get that many of them.


	5. School Begins

A/N: Just found out by experiment that one section divider line on FFN is worth 44 words to the word counter in the software.

For the record, the Sorting Hat can see just how mind-numbingly fucked up Harmony's head is due to her kill count vs. age data point being an extreme outlier from the norm. Hence it was okay with being bluntly honest… and why Dumbledore speaks with her about her problems right after the feast.

About dragon skin, did you hear about Pinnacle Armour's DRAGON SKIN technology? Yeah, that's damned durable. Dragon skin protective gear here is treated so it is even more durable than it was previously, though the overall energy-dispersive ability of a whole dragon will result in usually superior protection than a pair of gloves against most attacks. Said body armour can even withstand a point-blank grenade blast from an M67 Grenade (180 g High Explosive) and not break.

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Chapter 5: School Begins

Gryffindor.

Yep, that sounded about right given she was known to do some amazingly stupidly brave things. Well, it would certainly help her make sure nothing bad happened to Hermione, since her younger sister had not been taught how to behave and was probably going to be as assertive as she was on the train, which others would perceive as bossiness. She was still pondering why the Sorting Hat hadn't been shocked by the blood on her hands when Headmaster Albus Dumbledore stood from his seat and the hall suddenly went silent. His arms were opened wide and he was beaming as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.

"Welcome!" he said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"

Harmony clapped and cheered with the rest. To her left, Harry was asking the oldest redheaded boy, whose badge read "Prefect" something that she had to strain a bit to catch over the noise "Is he… a bit mad?"

Percy chuckled "Mad? He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?"

Harmony's eyebrows threatened to disappear into her bushy hair as the tell-tale sparkle of Chrono transport appeared in front of them, covering the towering dishes of food that had just materialized before the sparkles faded from existence. She was finally able to extend her hand toward the center of the table, after failing to before. She supposed this made sense, since Chrono transport could be quite messy if one didn't know the destination and materialized, say, INSIDE something else. Harmony frowned a little at a mental image she just had, it was of her hand and forearm exploding in a mushy mess as a mound of mashed potatoes appeared where her arm was. That would definitely be unpleasant, which was probably why it was not possible to reach past the students' plates before the food appeared.

"That does look good." The ghost in the ruff said, also somewhere to Harmony's left.

"Can't you—" Harry's voice started, but was cut off by the ghost.

"I haven't eaten for nearly five hundred years, I don't need to, of course, but one does miss it. I don't think I've introduced myself? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington at your service.

Resident ghost of Gryffindor Tower."

"I know who you are!" said Ron's voice suddenly. "My brothers told me about you — you're Nearly Headless Nick!"

"I would prefer you to call me Sir Nicholas de Mimsy—" the ghost began stiffly, but a sandy-haired boy that Harmony thought might be named Seamus Finnigan interrupted.

"Nearly Headless? How can you be nearly headless?" Harmony looked over, noting how Sir Nicholas looked extremely miffed, as if their little chat wasn't going at all the way he wanted.

"Like this," he said irritably. He seized his left ear and pulled. His whole head swung off his neck and fell onto his shoulder as if it was on a hinge. Someone had obviously tried to behead him, but not done it properly. Looking pleased at the stunned looks on their faces, Nearly Headless Nick flipped his head back onto his neck, coughed, and said, "So… new Gryffindors! I hope you're going to help us win the House Championship this year? Gryffindors have never gone so long without winning. Slytherins have got the cup six years in a row! The Bloody Baron's becoming almost unbearable—he's the Slytherin ghost."

Harmony, along with many others, looked over at the Slytherin table to see a ghost sitting there, with blank staring eyes and robes stained with silver blood. He had probably been a moderately handsome man in life, from what Harmony could see, but one could practically feel the despair, regret and a deep sorrow radiating off him. She also got the impression that he was immensely old, at least a thousand years old… He was seated next to the blonde named Draco Malfoy, who didn't look too pleased with the seating arrangements. She shivered just looking at the Bloody Baron, thinking back to the dozen or so people she had killed and how her first kill had left her not unlike the Bloody Baron, drenched in blood and, after the initial tears ran dry, completely blank-faced until her mother had snapped her out of the stupor.

"How did he get covered in blood?" asked Seamus. Harmony was hoping it had been from an act of self-defence, but from the deep regret and immense self-loathing etched all over his face, regardless of if what the circumstances had been, he had probably killed or terribly wounded someone very close to him, perhaps a lover, his child or another family member.

"I've never asked," Nearly Headless Nick stated rather delicately to Harmony's left as she kept eating as if something painful was not happening inside her.

When everyone was done with their main courses, the food disappeared from the plates, leaving them again sparkling clean—In other words, the dirty stuff had all been teleported out and clean stuff teleported onto the tables in their exact place in approximately one instant. The desserts appeared next, and Harmony chose not to partake significantly as she had no need for empty calories, having had enough from the main courses. Hermione, having grown up with mostly their dentist father, also didn't do desserts much. The only thing the siblings took was what most others left alone: A significant part of the fruit set at the table. Out of the corner of her eye, Harmony spotted Dumbledore wearing the Sorting Hat for a moment, frowning and probably talking mentally with it. She wouldn't be surprised if she was called out to speak with the Headmaster for her record right after the feast… He seemed friendly enough at least.

The talk on her left, closer to the Head Table than where she sat, was turning to people's families. Apparently, Seamus' father was a muggle, his mom only told him she was a witch after they married, and it was a nasty shock for him, and the others found this bit amusing. Neville was brought up by his grandmother and his family apparently thought he was a Squib (Harmony had done most of her reading on Wizarding society while Hermione liked the history more) for many years. One of his Great-Uncles had hung him out a window by his ankles and then dropped him when his great-Aunt passed him a cake, Neville's bouncing on impact counted as accidental magic apparently. Harmony made a mental note that not only were wizards resistant to blunt trauma compared to muggles, the same way that psychics in the Psychic Dominator Disaster were, they could also hang upside-down for long periods of time without having a stroke.

Right next to Harmony, who was the closest to the exit doors out of the mostly-first-year area of the table (i.e. the area closest to the Heads, this was apparently an unspoken rule) Hermione was talking excitedly to Percy (who, as a Prefect, wasn't frowned upon when breaking the aforementioned unspoken rule). "do hope they start right away, there's so much to learn, I'm particularly interested in Transfiguration, you know, turning something into something else, of course, it's supposed to be very difficult—"

Percy was responding with previews of class content, but it wasn't very surprising "You'll be starting small, just matches into needles and that sort of thing—" Harmony was still having some problems with the idea of re-formatting matter, but she supposed that with the raw computational power required to make it possibly work it was natural that intense focus (harnessing of brain power) would be required, especially at first. The energy required would need to come from magical beings' ability to regenerate magical energy seemingly out of nowhere. Harmony had, a few weeks back, taken the most _ridiculous_ thing she could think of for an explanation to this energy, written it down, and her mother had laughed hysterically at how much it fit known data.

Apparently, the sentient mind was clever enough to circumvent the Second Law of Thermodynamics and draw upon the entropy of the universe for energy to do all sorts of things, though some things, items, etc. allowed that drawing of energy to proceed faster, like certain spells and potions, which acted as either psychic boosters or direct catalysts to the reactions that kept psychic energy manipulation under control. Harmony had had no idea what her mother had been yapping about, something about dissecting and modifying the brains of psychics, which completely terrified the girl. Jane had to spend half an hour telling Harmony about some of the research projects they'd found of Yuri's to calm her down and stop her from barricading herself away from her mother. Harmony was good at a lot of things, but neuroscience or even biology in general was not one of them, save the simpler aspects of killing i.e. "put knife/bullets here, here or here".

It took a long, tedious while of eating lots of pineapple and peach, but in the end the desserts went away and Professor Dumbledore got to his feet again. The hall fell silent. "Ahem — just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you. First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well."

Dumbledore's twinkling eyes flashed in the direction of what Harmony thought was probably the third-years' area of the Gryffindor Table "I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors. Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their House teams should contact Madam Hooch. And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor

on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

Harry laughed in front of Harmony (she was at the far end of the first-years' section from the Heads' Table), but he was one of the few who did. "He's not serious?" he muttered to Percy.

"Must be," said Percy, frowning at the Headmaster. "It's odd, because he usually gives us a reason why we're not allowed to go somewhere—the forest's full of dangerous beasts, everyone knows that. I do think he might have told us prefects, at least."

Dumbledore waited for the room to quiet down again, which did not take long, "And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" Harmony noticed that the other teachers' smiles

had become rather grimace-like all of a sudden. Dumbledore gave his wand a little flick, as if he was trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose high above the tables and twisted itself, snakelike, into words. "Everyone pick their favorite tune," said Dumbledore, "and off we go!"

What followed was possibly the most ridiculous song Harmony had ever had the misfortune to hear. Given something like 300 people were singing it, it was even worse. When the last ones singing, the redhead twins in third year, who had been following the tune of a very slow funeral march, finished, everyone clapped, and Dumbledore wiped his eyes "Ah, music, a magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot! Miss Shepard, may I have a word with you in a moment?"

The Gryffindor first years followed Percy through the chattering crowds, many of whom were craning to see Harmony and curious as to why she was being singled out on their very first day. Harmony had a feeling some rumours were going to be flying around soon, involving her doing something illegal on the train. Obviously, some older pureblood was no doubt going to come up with, based on looking at her and her sister's precocious (early-maturing ) bodies, the idea that "that Mudblood whore was trying to earn some money on the train from older students filthy enough to think of touching her". Harmony shared her mother's "extreme distaste" (this was an understatement comparable to saying that the Pacific was a droplet of water) toward brothel operators, sex traffickers and voluntary prostitutes. In fact, hearing about the sex slave trade was what had led her to learn some of the basics and theory of torture in the first place, though she'd found it more horrifying than any form of enjoyable, she did feel that some people deserved as much pain as could possibly be dealt to them.

* * *

A/N: This is why Harmony's Torture Skill is rated 1/5 but Torture Satisfaction is 0/5 in the Character Bio I gave in Ch 2 of this fic. Expect those ratings to change by third year.

* * *

Anyhow, Harmony moved up to stand before the head table, facing Professor Dumbledore, while the other teachers were dismissed and left. "I have heard certain things from the Sorting Hat about you, young Harmony." Dumbledore said, looking at her with grave eyes over half-moon glasses. Harmony looked at his nose instead, which allowed her to vaguely sense his mind brushing against hers in a surface scan instead of it being undetectable like an eye-contact mind-reading often was for her defensive skill levvel. "It told me that you were a killer."

She frowned, fixing the suddenly-dented mental walls she'd put around the idea of ending another sentient being, walls she had installed herself for her own protection, her own sanity. She retreated behind the excuse she had always used to pacify herself when their faces stared back at her in her sleep, not accusing, not angry, just… there, emotionless, _dead_. She had succeeded enough that all she had to do was occasionally take pills, when the nightmares got particularly bad, to make sure she didn't wake up soaked in sweat and trembling from dreaming about being drenched in pools of other people's blood. Maybe those thugs in that London apartment didn't need to die, but her threat instinct had screamed at the sight of the knives they had and she'd taken them out without so much as a second thought mostly because a) she was in a combat mindset and b) they didn't have faces, just ski masks that concealed their identities. It had made it so much easier for Harmony Shepard to respond as she'd been trained to instead of merely knocking them all unconscious as she would probably have done had they had faces (and no guns).

"Yes, I have taken lives before, but only in self-defence. They would have killed me otherwise, and believe me, Headmaster, no one regrets my having to be a killer more than I do. I assure you that no one at Hogwarts is in danger unless they try to kill or cripple me or my sister."

Dumbledore sighed, well, hopefully she'd keep to her word, but he'd watch her closely if people started getting hurt, oh yes… "Do your parents know of this?"

"Mom was the one who made sure I had enough training to stand in and ensure survival of both of us, since Hermione never expressed interest in learning." She looked away and frowned, speaking softly now "She wanted us to survive, and I want to defend my right to live, is that so wrong?" Dumbledore frowned too, he was good at manipulating people when truly needed (it was rare that he had to), but this girl was also quite good. He couldn't reasonably deny that she had a very valid point. "I will not harm any of your students who do not present a direct and immediate threat to the lives of other students, Professor Dumbledore, you have my word."

"But what about the right of others to live? Could you not have neutralized your enemies without killing them in your past encounters?"

Harmony laughed humourlessly "They forfeited their right to live when they decided, fully of their own volition, to attempt to rob another of his or her right to live. Have you seen the Batman comics? Joker only gets to kill so many because Batman wouldn't kill him."

The old wizard shrugged, knowing from his surface scan that Harmony, though able to, had no intent to aggressively attack, only intent to defend against threats "That will have to be enough for now, it seems, come, you should get to your dormitory. It has been a long day after all." He left the fact that he would watch her closely should suspicious things happen unsaid.

Harmony nodded mutely, carefully avoiding thinking about anything remotely important as she followed Dumbledore to Gryffindor Tower, passing an annoyed Poltergeist en route. "The password for the present time is Caput Draconis, Miss Shepard. Enjoy your sleep, also, note that teachers are typically usually quite lax about first-years being late in the first week or so." He twinkled his eyes at her with a small smile.

"Thank you sir, for escorting me. Enjoy your evening, Professor Dumbledore." Harmony bowed politely before heading up the stairs. Dumbledore chuckled as she watched her disappear up the stairs, for a few moments later the bellowing of five very surprised, very embarrassed first-year boys cut the peace of the tower and Harmony came down the stairs rolling her eyes. She grinned lopsidedly at Professor Dumbledore before heading up the other stairs. All of the boys were too embarrassed to run after her and give her a few choice words the way they wanted to.

She found four red velvet four-poster beds, with only one remaining empty for her. The others questioned her on her meeting with Dumbledore but she refused to answer much, and eventually even Hermione gave up. After bathing and doing a simple charm to dry her hair (one of the few household charms that most girls and women found very useful and thus learned at a young age, with most muggle-borns learning almost immediately), Harmony actually examined the bed while dressed in only the practical underwear her mother and Aunt Tanya had gotten for her. She checked the bed for pests before noticing it was too soft for her to get a good night's sleep on. As the room went bed-dresser/wall-bed, with everything laid out radially (the dressers thus made the room like a bunch of cubicles with the bed on one side and the dresser on the other side), there was a space between the bed and dresser, and that was enough for her to sleep lying down. She pulled the duvet off the bed, laid it down on the floor after folding it once width-wise, pulled the blanket off, yanked the curtains of the four-poster shut to give the impression she was sleeping in it, laid down, draped the blanket over herself and went to sleep on something that didn't feel like swamp mud sucking her down into its depths. That had been one training exercise where she had almost died, and after that, she had a fear of those ball-pools kids played in and other too-soft things that she could sink into. She even had a fear of bubble baths, for the surface was concealed from her sight.

The next morning she woke up when the sun lit up her cubicle at 5:30 AM, as she wasn't sleeping inside a closed four-poster. This allowed her time to wash her face and teeth in the dorm's shared bathroom, rearrange her gear and settle into her school uniform before the other girls were awake, including adding an incendiary grenade launcher round to her current load-out of five clips of pistol ammunition (counting the loaded, safety-ed gun in her left-side waist holster), two High Explosive Dual Purpose grenade launcher rounds (one in a reinforced storage box on a belt pocket, just in case, the other loaded in the weapon), said grenade launcher (the right-side waist holster), two fragmentation grenades (each in a pocket on one side of her belt), a 500-gram C4 brick, the detonator assembly for the brick, and two combat knives plus a folding shovel. Under her uniform she was wearing body armour, so she was very thankful that the castle both had what seemed to be the wizarding version of air conditioning and a uniform not too unlike a lab coat, as she didn't overheat and could still cover all of it up.

She looked toward her sister's bed after she finished fastening the last parts of her gear, at 5:50 AM. She had noted last night that the beds included ventilation spaces in the headboards, footboards and tops to prevent oxygen starvation, so did not harass Hermione about it). She awoke her sister at approximately 6 AM, and they were among the first down to the Great Hall, only getting lost once. This was due to Harmony having noted doorways and painting frames as points of reference instead of the ever-shifting stairs and walkways. They reached the Great Hall at about 7 AM, picked up their schedules, ate breakfast, and ran upstairs to grab their needed things before class. As expected for Harmony, Hermione kicked ass in every class, knowing everything they needed to know and more, while Harmony… she got by, though she was more interested in exploring the castle than anything else for now.

* * *

It took until the end of the first week for Harmony to get a relatively good idea of where things were in the castle, and even that was only due to quickly finishing her meals and homework and not spending much time practicing or in the library unlike Hermione. Also unlike Hermione, she wasn't constantly offering help to others. This had a few unpleasant side-effects with regards to the twins' relationship, but to Harmony, the Hogwarts Experience as she dubbed it was enough of a challenge to adapt to that she didn't have time to focus on much else. Fake doors, doors that had to be opened in certain ways ranging from tickling to asking politely, moving staircases sometimes with vanishing steps, suits of armour that could walk, along with some of the less polite ghosts… The caretaker Filch was also the definition of "asshole", but that was beside the point. On Wednesday nights they studied basic Astronomy that Harmony was tempted sorely to laugh her ass off at, given how rudimentary their observations of the planets were. Apparently the Wizarding World just found patterns that fit and left it at that instead of developing real models and predicting future events based on the laws of reality, which would remain constant as long as they weren't actively circumvented.

To catch up on some of the sleep Harmony would miss by waking up far before all others and going to sleep at the same time as them (all her homework was done after curfew) she had to sleep through History of Magic, the only class taught by a ghost and by far the mot boring class. In Harmony's opinion, Binns was far overdue for consigning to what communists used to call the "ash heap of history". The other in the class mostly tried to stay awake, but she didn't bother given he was only reading form the textbook anyhow. This was why she sat at the very back of the class and Hermione at the very front, to not anger her sister, who lectured her the night she realized what her older twin was doing in class. The one-way talk went until Hermione threw up her arms and left Harmony alone on the issue.

The schedule had twenty periods in a week, each period being about 90 minutes long (Period 1: 0900 to 1030, Period Two 1040-1210, Lunch 1210-1340, Period Three 1350-1520, Period Four 1530-1700). Three periods a week they had to go out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology with a plump witch called Professor Sprout, where they learnt to take care of all sorts of plants and fungi. Four times a week each, they had Charms and Transfiguration, occupying another eight of the twenty periods. Three periods a week were devoted to Defence Against the Dark Arts, two to History of Magic and the entirety of Friday morning to Potions, with Friday afternoons off. Harmony found this extremely odd given Potions was a core subject on par with Charms and Transfiguration. However, she was no longer surprised when they arrived at the classroom for the first lesson. "No fume hoods! Inadequate ventilation!" She hissed at Hermione in outrage "And with the Slytherins!" She had long since noted the extreme hostility between her house and that of all the blood supremacists (along with a majority who seemed neutral to blood status but still hostile to the Gryffindors).

This could be very bad, since at breakfast Harmony had caught Ron saying Snape favoured the Slytherins, and the man's own house would be who any successful Gryffindors were showing up. She had heard of these small men before, read about them in books, but had never encountered one in person. As the lesson proceeded, Harmony's dislike of Snape began to form, and by the time he'd snapped at Hermione to sit down, Harmony had concluded that Snape was a certifiable asshole on par with Filch. As for what he snapped at them to copy down, she already had, in silence, from her position next to her sister (so they would always partner on potions) even as Snape had said the answers to the questions he was using to pick on Harry Potter.

About halfway through the first period of the class, Hermione and Harmony relocated their feet to the stools and sat on their desk while they continued working even as others scrambled to stand on their stools to escape the potion seeping across the floor from Neville and Seamus' cauldron. Neville seemed to have turned the other Gryffindor's cauldron into a twisted blob. Snape berated him loudly, vanishing the spilled potion with a wave of his wand as Neville was moaning in pain from the boils springing up all over him. Harmony sneered and whispered stealthily to Hermione "He said there was little 'foolish wand-waving here'." This was covered by the noise of the classroom and prompted Hermione's frown at Snape's behaviour to turn into a smirk at the comment for only a moment. By one hour before the end of the class, they were finished their potion and had bottled a vial to submit to Snape, and Harmony began cleaning up as Hermione walked over to put the vial on Snap's desk. Harmony had bottled another vial just in case he did something crazy like drop their vial on purpose, she would ask Madam Pomfrey, the Matron (i.e. School Nurse) to help get rid of it later.

As the second week of school rolled around, a notice appeared in the Gryffindor Common Room stating that flying lessons would begin on Thursday, with Gryffindor and Slytherin learning together. People were telling all sorts of absurd stories about flying in their younger years, including Malfoy's tales of dodging helicopters (Harmony figured out Malfoy had no idea what a helicopter was when she asked him to describe it and he failed abysmally, describing something sounding like a Kirov Airship instead) and almost hitting hang-gliders. Harmony was apathetic about the actual flying and more questioning how broomsticks worked, wondering whether or not that had anything to do with the Aristotelian Physics exhibited (for the most part) by Kirov Airships. According to what could be salvaged from downed Kirovs and captured Soviet documents, the big armoured dirigibles contained some manner of anti-gravity device (allowing the thing to fly) and some manner of inertial dampener that allowed surprising manoeuvrability. Both traits' signatures would probably match the "magic" EM signature of broomsticks once Jane got her hands on a broom to test. By imitating the signature, the same effect had been achieved by Soviet scientists after all…

Interestingly, Draco Malfoy and his cronies came over to the Gryffindor Table to pick on Neville the morning before flying lessons, briefly nabbing an item he'd just received called a Remembrall. It was a useless thing that was supposed to tell you if you forget something, but doesn't tell you what you forgot. At approximately 1530 Hours (last period of the day had been cancelled) the Gryffindor first-years rushed down the front steps of the school onto the grounds for their first flying lesson. It was a clear day, which would be ideal for flying were it not for the breeze. They marched down the sloping lawn toward a flat lawn on the far side of the grounds from the Forbidden Forest. Twenty broomsticks were lying on the ground in neat, straight lines and the Slytherins were already there. The teacher, Madam Hooch, a woman with hawk-yellow eyes and short grey hair, arrived soon after the Gryffindors.

"Well, what are you all waiting for?" she barked. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up." Everyone did as they were told, Harmony noting that the school brooms were old and in many cases dilapidated-looking compared to the ones she'd seen in Diagon Alley's Quality Quidditch Supplies store. "Stick out your right hand over your broom," Madam Hooch spoke rather loudly, but nothing close to some drill sergeants Harmony had had to deal with in the past. "and say 'Up!'"

"UP!" everyone shouted. Harmony's broom popped off the ground a bit but then fell back down, Hermione's broom rolled over, and many brooms did not move at all, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy however had their brooms jump into their hands. Given the psychic energy fields that probably allowed brooms to fly, they could probably tell if you were afraid, as Neville's voice betrayed (his broom hadn't moved at all) rather clearly.

Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off, and Harmony made a crude, rather immature joke about riding phallic objects. Parvati and Lavender made faces at her in reply and Hermione rolled her eyes. Madam Hooch was walking up and down the rows correcting people's grips, and told Malfoy he'd been doing it wrong for years. Harmony thought that most people would have grips different from the standard, to suit themselves, but of course, when teaching, they could only teach the one-size-fits-all version…

"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard," said Madam Hooch. "Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle—three—two—" Neville, obviously frightened of failing to fly at all, pushed off hard before the whistle had come near Madam Hooch's lips. "Come back, boy!" Obviously, Hooch had momentarily forgotten she was dealing with kids who may not have ever ridden a broom before. Neville's incredibly unreliable memory (perhaps caused by damage to his hippocampus or amygdala caused by his Great Uncle Algie hanging him upside-down out a window?) didn't help either given he'd probably failed to listen due to nerves to her instructions of coming down by leaning forward just slightly. His rise was at a constant rate, Harmony observed, confirming the use of anti-gravity in at least keeping the broom Aristotelian.

Neville's terrified face went white as he saw the ground get further and further away. He slipped sideways off the broom and fell with a thud and a nasty crack. Harmony raised an eyebrow as Neville was still breathing, a Muggle would probably have snapped their neck or spine from such a fall. "Broken wrist, come on, boy, it's all right, up you get." She turned her yellow eyes upon the rest of the class "None of you is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing! You leave those brooms where they are or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say 'Quidditch.' Come on, dear."

Neville's face was tear-streaked as he trudged off with Madam Hooch, who had her arm around him. As soon as they were out of earshot, Malfoy started laughing his ass off "Did you see his face, the great lump?" The other Slytherins joined in, and Harmony frowned in irritation.

"Shut up, Malfoy," snapped Parvati Patil.

"Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom?" said Pansy Parkinson, a modestly pretty (she would look better with a longer nose) but apparently bitchy Slytherin girl. "Never thought you'd like fat little cry-babies, Parvati."

"Look!" said Malfoy, lunging forward and plucking something out of the grass. "It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him." Harmony privately agreed with the "stupid" comment since it made no sense to know that you've forgotten something, as the whole point of forgetting was that you couldn't remember.

"Give that here, Malfoy," said Harry quietly. The chatter of the children died down as Harmony arched one delicate eyebrow at the gutsy action by the black-haired boy.

Malfoy sneered and ignored Harry "I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find… how about… up a tree?"

"Give it here!" Harry yelled, but Malfoy had leapt onto his broom and taken off, hovering at about twenty meters up, he called "Come and get it, Potter!"

Harry seized his broom, "NO!" Hermione shouted from next to Harmony "Madam Hooch told us not to move, you'll get us all into trouble."

Harmony was in agreement, it wasn't worth it, people like Malfoy would never quit, the only possibility was if they were in way over their heads, panicked and wanted out of their dark ways. She hoped Malfoy would manage to get out of the darkness alive, but this was a little thing not worth getting in trouble over. However, typical of the house of 'courage, chivalry, etc.' Harry was pigheaded and mounted his broom, kicking off and having his robes ruffle in the wind "wait, his robes are being affected by the wind…" Harmony mumbled to herself and gasped, wondering what that meant for the maximum possible speed of any broomstick. It would not be limited only by the amount of inertia the broom's energy emission fields could shield the user against then, but the drag of the user and how much power is required to keep it within tolerable levels… This would explain why broomstick riding was tiring, if the broom drained some of the user's energy to keep itself going, for the energy initially imbued in it was surely limited unless it tapped the energy of the universe or something.

There was an admiring whoop from Ron and screaming and gasping from the other girls on the ground when Harry turned sharply in mid-air to face Malfoy and called out "Give it here, or I'll knock you off that broom!"

"Oh, yeah?" Malfoy was trying to sneer but Harmony and Hermione both thought he looked rather worried. Harry leaned far forward on his broom, grabbing it tightly in both hands, and shot forward on a collision course. Malfoy only just dodged in time. Harry came to an immediate stop and spun his broom around, a few people clapped. "No Crabbe and Goyle up here to save your neck, Malfoy." That was audible even from the ground.

"Catch it if you can, then!" Malfoy yelled, throwing the glass ball high up into the air and diving back toward the ground. Harry threw his broom into a dive and caught up to the ball less than a meter above the ground, pulling up sharply and landing gently on the ground, rolling off his broom. Harmony couldn't resist clapping sarcastically at the stupidity of the act and the fact that only Aristotelian physics had saved the boy whereas without inertial dampening he would have splattered himself all over the ground.

"HARRY POTTER!" Harmony's head whipped around to see Professor McGonagall running toward them. Harry scrambled to his feet, trembling where he stood. "Never, in all my time at Hogwarts… how dare you… might have broken your neck…"

"It wasn't his fault, Professor—" Parvati spoke up.

"Be quiet, Miss Patil—" McGonagall snapped.

"But Malfoy —" Ron began indignantly

"That's enough, Mr. Weasley. Potter, follow me, now." Harmony barely resisted the urge to cover her eyes and groan. How many house points was this stunt going to lose them? Professor McGonagall led Harry away, up the front steps, and out of sight. As soon as he was gone, Malfoy resumed being an asshole, as per usual. Harmony tuned him out and focused on learning how to fly. It wasn't as hard as it was for Hermione, once Harmony forced herself to accept the fact that brooms and riders weren't affected by gravity. Apparently Hermione still had a fear of heights from that roller coaster bombing earlier in year, which Harmony had gotten over better than her younger twin had.

* * *

After dinner, Hermione told Harmony in a hushed whisper that she'd overheard Ron and Harry agree to a duel with Malfoy at midnight in the Trophy Room, and that she was going to stop them from going. "Do you want help? Should I help you knock them out and tie them up until morning?" Harmony asked as she was doing her homework, not looking up at Hermione but acutely aware of those who might be listening. "I have no problem doing that, you know…"

Hermione shoved her sister gently with a grin "You always were prone to violence."

"Sometimes, some people don't understand anything else, especially people like Malfoy. You know this is a trap for Harry and Ron, right? It would be better to stay out of it to teach them a lesson. They need to learn a lesson about what less honourable people act like anyways."

"But it would lose Gryffindor points…"

"Points that you and I can win right back in class by participating, Hermione, people get caught out of bed at night all the time, they won't lose too many points for us to make up for."

"Well, you can think your way and I'll think in mine, I will stop them, mark my words." Hermione said, frowning at her older, apathetic sister.

"Then I will go with you."

"Why, Harmony? Why do you want to stalk me like this?"

"There will be no professors around after curfew to watch out for you as a minor, and thus it is my duty to take care of you." Harmony stated "If there is a fight, it will be better to have another set of fists present."

"Fine, whatever." Hermione huffed, throwing her arms up and walking away. "Maybe I should tell Percy, the Prefect, he'd put a stop to this." Harmony didn't even have to tell her about how that would probably make it even more certain that she would be friend-less.

At half past eleven, the two boys concerned in the appointment made their way down the staircase into the common room clad only in bathrobes. Hermione spoke first as the boys neared the portrait hole, herself clad in a pink bathrobe "I can't believe you're going to do this, Harry." Harmony on the other hand was wearing a set of comfortable black and grey clothes, to better blend in with the darkness of the castle at night. She had only brought her loaded grenade launcher (with a custom-made flash-bang-smoke round) and silencer-fitted pistol, with two extra clips for the pistol, far less than her usual daytime load.

"You! Go back to bed!" Ron snapped angrily.

Hermione snapped right back "I almost told your brother, Percy, he's a prefect, he'd put a stop to this."

Harry Potter ignored Hermione completely "Come on," he told Ron, pushing open the portrait of the Fat Lady and climbing out.

Hermione followed Ron through the portrait hole, hissing at them like a cat that had had its tail stepped on "Don't you care about Gryffindor, do you only care about yourselves, I don't want Slytherin to win the House Cup, and you'll lose all the points I got from Professor McGonagall for knowing about Switching Spells."

"Go away." Ron told her.

"All right, but I warned you, you just remember what I said when you're on the train home tomorrow, you're so—" Hermione was struck dumb as she did a double-take at the portrait of the Fat Lady, she had gone off to visit another painting, and Harmony had forgotten to prop the door open. The older twin facepalmed, if she were at training, such an elementary mistake would have had her doing fifty or more push-ups with no resting allowed. The only reason she'd put up with the harsh training was because she didn't want to _die_ at the hands of people who were after her or her family, and she had an ambition to grow to lead or help lead a major world power. "Now what are we going to do?" Hermione's voice was shrill and probably a bit panicked.

"That's your problem, we've got to go, we're going to be late." Ron informed her.

Hermione stood there for a brief moment thinking, and Harmony could almost feel the only reasonable solution pop into her twin's head. Hermione began to move, and, as if she was her twin's shadow, Harmony did too. They accelerated and caught up with the boys before the end of the corridor. "We're coming with you" Harmony stated in a monotone intended to intimidate.

"You are not." Harry shot back with a frown.

"D'you think I'm going to stand out here and wait for Filch to catch me? If he finds all four of us we'll tell him the truth, that we were trying to stop you, and you can back us up." Hermione said, Harmony was very glad she'd come with Hermione, since the chances of the caretaker believing that were about nil, and Harmony could pick Hermione up and run like hell if need be.

"You've got some nerve—" said Ron loudly.

Harry's voice was sharper "Shut up, both of you! I heard something."

There was a sort of snuffling noise. "Mrs. Norris?" Ron questioned, squinting in the darkness.

It was Neville, who was sleeping curled up on the floor, but jerked awake as they crept nearer "Thank goodness you found me! I've been out here for hours, I couldn't remember the new password to get in to bed."

"Keep your voice down, Neville. The password's 'Pig snout' but it won't help you now, the Fat Lady's gone off somewhere." Harmony hissed.

"How's your arm?" Harry asked kindly.

"Fine, Madam Pomfrey mended it in about a minute." Neville showed them said arm.

"Good, well, look, Neville, we've got to be somewhere, we'll see you later…" Harry began.

Neville practically leapt to his feet "Don't leave me! I don't want to stay here alone, the Bloody Baron's been past twice already."

Ron glanced at his wristwatch and then glared at Hermione, Harmony and Neville "If any of you get us caught, I'll never rest until I've learned that Curse of the Bogies Quirrell told us about, and used it on you."

Hermione opened her mouth, but Harmony hissed at her to be quiet and Harry beckoned them all forward. They dashed along corridors striped with bars of moonlight from the high windows. At every turn, Harmony was wondering if they would run into Filch or Mrs. Norris, but they never did, even as they sped down a staircase to the Third Floor and tiptoed toward the trophy room. No one was there yet, and the cups, shields, plates and statues gleamed silver and gold in what little light there was. They edged along, keeping their eyes on the doors at either end of the room. Harry had his wand out as time crept by, and Harmony had a hand resting in her pistol holster.

"He's late, maybe he's chickened out," Ron suggested in a soft whisper. Harmony smirked and motioned all of them back toward the door they'd come in from, the kid still hadn't figure out this was a trap yet…

It was then that a voice came from the next room, and it wasn't Malfoy. "Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner." It was Filch, speaking to Mrs. Norris. Harry waved at the others to follow him as they made their escape, but he needn't have for the twins as Harmony had grabbed Hermione by the hand and began pulling her toward the exit on their side of the trophy room as soon as she'd heard the voice. However, since Hermione wasn't nimble enough and Harmony didn't want to reveal her secrets yet (carrying Hermione over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes while running along at full tilt would tip her off), they were about as fast as the rest of the group. However, the clumsy Neville boy tripped and grabbed Ron around the waist, the pair of them crashing into a suit of armour hard.

The noise seemed impossibly loud in the quiet hallway, and Harry bellowed "RUN!" as they all began to sprint down the hallways, Harry in the lead (Harmony was pacing herself while everyone else was running like hell). They tore through a tapestry, went along a hidden hall, and emerged near the Charms classroom. Hermione, gasping for breath (Harmony frowned at her twin's fitness level or lack thereof), started giving the boys an "I told you so" speech. Unfortunately, they were both too arrogant to admit that their manly posturing had led them astray.

Even more unfortunately, they ran into Peeves, who betrayed them to Filch after Ron took a foolish swipe at the poltergeist. Hermione unlocked a door that they fled into, and shut after them. Harmony however, noticed some things about the room that no one else seemed to have caught. She pointed this out to Neville with a wry, very dry, rather forced smirk and the boy nearly pissed himself in fright, such was his terrified trembling after he turned around. He started tugging at Harry's sleeve, so scared he was unable to speak, while Harmony bought time for them by engaging the threat in a glaring match for now, making it feel taken aback at how something so much smaller dared to have a staring match with it.

* * *

A/N: REVIEW!


	6. Trolling

A/N: To be honest, I always thought Lucius Malfoy was supposed to look like the actor for that blonde elf guy in the Fellowship from Lord of the Rings. That's my mental image of him. Draco is a paler version with a few minor differences.

* * *

Chapter 6: Trolling

Harmony had been staring into the eyes on the central head of a monstrous, three-headed dog, filling the entire space from ceiling to floor, well, trapdoor too given it was standing over one, and she realized that this was the forbidden corridor on the third floor. How they got the dog in here, she didn't know, but currently she had to keep it too busy having a glaring match to attack, while Filch went away outside. She tightened her hold on the handle of her grenade launcher, ready to draw and fire at any time necessary to at least blind and deafen the beast. The Cerberus had yellowish teeth showing, and was drooling slightly as it tried to stare her down but failed given it was surprised, both at their sudden appearance at night (the dog had been taking a nap) and the glare this small being dared to match to it. It narrowed its eyes and growled at the girl, paused, reared back a little in surprise as she didn't back down, and growled louder.

Harmony heard the doorknob turn, and that meant the rest of them had finally figured things out, she gave them a second to move and then backed up quickly, keeping her eyes on the dog. They slammed the doors shut (Harmony provided most of the muscle involved) and they all fled back down the corridor. They ran all the way to the portrait of the Fat Lady on the seventh floor and Harry panted out the password to a puzzled Fat Lady. Four students collapsed, trembling, into armchairs, while Harmony sat on the armrest of Hermione's armchair, leaning against the back of said chair, stroking her sister's hair and kneading her shoulders to help her relax. Harmony highly suspected that if she didn't preoccupy herself with Hermione's well-being, she too would be trembling with fright and anger as he mind seethed: _WHAT THE HELL IS SOMETHING LIKE THAT DOING IN A SCHOOL?_

Ron broke the silence that had descended upon them with something that sounded abut right to Harmony "What do they think they're doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school? If any dog needs exercise, that one does."

"You don't use your eyes, any of you, do you?" Hermione snapped at them, having caught her breath. "Didn't you see what it was standing on?"

Harry shrugged "The floor? I wasn't looking at its feet, I was too busy with its heads." He trembled a little as he finished that sentence.

Hermione shook her head of busy brown hair, glowering at Harry and Ron "No, not the floor. It was standing on a trapdoor. It's obviously guarding something." She gave her sister a soft smile, prompting Harmony to take her hands off Hermione's shoulders, and stood up. "I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed, or worse, expelled. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed." She stalked off huffing in anger. Harmony on the other hand decided to hang back just past the curve of the stairwell where she couldn't be seen by the boys but could hear them perfectly well. All she heard before they went up their own stairwell was Ron's voice muttering "No, we don't mind. You'd think we dragged her along, wouldn't you?"

After the Cerberus Incident, Hermione refused to speak to Harry and Ron. This lasted until a couple days later when a long, thin package carried by six owls was dropped in front of Harry, along with a letter. Harmony had two ideas on what it could be given its length-to-width ratio: An old-fashioned rifle, either bolt-action or semiautomatic, or a broomstick, and since the former didn't seem likely…

"A Nimbus Two Thousand!" Ron moaned in envy from down the table "I've never even _touched_ one." They finished their breakfast marginally faster than Harmony (though the three ate similar amounts, she was usually far more efficient, but this time the boys just resorted to barely chewing their food) and left the hall. She was on their heels like a wraith as she had noticed Draco Malfoy leave the hall almost as soon as Potter got his broom.

She was right on that one, Crabbe and Goyle barred their way upstairs halfwar across the Entrance Hall. Malfoy grabbed the package from Harry and felt at it, a mixture of jealousy and spite creeping onto his pale face. "That's a broomstick, you'll be in for it this time, Potter, first years aren't allowed them."

Ron opened his mouth "It's not any old broomstick, it's a Nimbus Two Thousand. What did you say you've got at home, Malfoy, a Comet Two Sixty? Comets look flashy, but they're not in the same league as the Nimbus." He grinned at Harry.

"What would you know about it, Weasley, you couldn't afford half the handle," Malfoy snapped back. "I suppose you and your brothers have to save up twig by twig." The main reason Harmony didn't even plan on stepping in to break up the brewing fight was that she didn't care, the second was the rapid approach of a certain someone. Before any shit could go down, Professor Flitwick, a very short but brilliant man who taught Charms, appeared next to Malfoy.

He had a rather squeaky voice, but was a kind and fair man overall, at least, that was what Harmony thought of him "Not arguing, I hope, boys?"

"Potters been sent a broomstick, Professor." Malfoy said rather quickly.

"Yes, yes, that's right," Flitwick was grinning wickedly, probably relishing the thought of Slytherin losing the Quidditch Cup for the first time in a while. "Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?"

"A Nimbus Two Thousand, sir, and it's really thanks to Malfoy here that I've got it."

Malfoy was all but gaping in horror and shouting _NOOOO!_ by this point. Harmony wanted to laugh, but knew it would not be good for her hopes of relatively quiet Hogwarts years. She also suspected that she might as well flush those hopes down the drain given Hermione's occasional and often highly untimely bouts of nosiness and the funny stuff around the school.

The Gryffindors made their way past Malfoy and his goons, Harry chortling as they reached the top of the grand staircase "Well, it's true, if he hadn't stolen Neville's Remembrall I wouldn't be on the team…"

Harmony watched her twin stalk up the stairs faster than herself, grimacing slightly at the anger in Hermione's voice "So I suppose you think that's a reward for breaking rules?" Hermione was glaring at the package in Harry's hands.

"I thought you weren't speaking to us?" Harry looked a bit confused, raising one eyebrow.

"Yes, don't stop now," said Ron, "its doing us so much good." Hermione hmpf-ed and marched away with her head held high at the rudeness of the boys. Harmony shot the boys a dangerous glare before walking off after her sister.

* * *

Harmony only managed to set up her satellite radio completely by the end of the second week at Hogwarts. Jane Shepard expected a report by September 15, or she'd put up those communications towers (which were termed Radar Installations in MCV-Warfare jargon) in the general area where her original transponder signal began to fail. Harmony found that she could only get static in reception, so she tried broadcasting a few times before she turned the radio off. The appointed second-attempt times were September 25 and 30. On the first try on the 25th, Harmony managed to get a good signal from a nearby just-built communications tower. That meant she had a secure uplink to Mom and Dad. After the usual pleasantries, she briefed her Mom on her current condition and situation, Jane told her to do more reconnaissance of the area if possible, and they ended the call after about twenty minutes of talking. Jane had also asked if Harmony was still having nightmares as she had had occasionally for the last two years and whether or not shed remembered to pack her pills just in case.

* * *

On Halloween morning, Professor Flitwick announced they were ready to make objects fly. They had all wanted to do this, albeit for assorted reasons. In Harmony's case, it was to study the EM signatures required for anti-gravity to work. Flitwick put the class into pairs to practice. Instead of having the twins, who were of roughly equal ability, work together, Hermione was stuck with, of all people, Ron Weasley. It was hard to tell which of the two was more pissed off. Harmony was left being the lone one out since there was an odd number of first-year Gryffindors. On the other hand, this meant she got to hang around Flitwick, who told her quietly, when she asked him about it, that he paired Ron with Hermione because the boy needed help.

According to what Harmony was seeing right now, as everyone got started after Flitwicked passed out the feathers and warned them about spell pronunciation using a cock-and-bull story (literally bull, as it used a buffalo in it), she couldn't help but agree with Flitwick, Ron was waving his long arms like a windmill as he shouted "_Wingardium Leviosa_!". Harmony, on the other hand, had said it calmly once, after swishing and flicking as instructed twenty-some times to practice, using her shiny titanium wand. She managed to make the feather fly up approximately the distance she wanted it to fly up, and hover there. Flitwick smiled at her and said rather quietly "Five points to Gryffindor." She understood, he didn't want to have her show everyone else up too much and thus be victimized by less-adequate ones…

While Harmony was practicing her wand movement without thinking of the words of the spell, Hermione was arguing heatedly with Ron. "You're saying it wrong, it's Wing-_gar_-dium Levi-_o_-sa, make the 'gar' nice and long."

Ron snarled back at her "You do it, then, if you're so clever." Harmony had to resist the urge to laugh as she dropped her feather from its hovering back to the desk. The boy was just asking for it…

Hermione rolled up the sleeves of her robes, flicked her wand, and said, in a rather prim and proper voice, "Wingardium Leviosa!" The feather the two were supposed to share rose off the desk and hovered a bit over a meter above their heads.

Professor Flitwick clapped and called out "Oh, well done! Everyone see here, Miss Granger's done it!"

"Wouldn't that just make my sister even more unpopular than she is already?"

"No, young Harmony, that is not currently possible. The point here is to teach Ronald a lesson in taunting others that he knows he cannot match up to, necessary as Gryffindors tend to be too stupid to withdraw from fights they cannot win, so it is better to teach them not to get in those fights in the first place… He will appreciate what she is doing for him later on."

"It's no wonder no one can stand her," Ron said to Harry just in front of the twins as they pushed their way through the crowded corridor after class let out, "she's a nightmare, honestly."

Hermione began to escalate from sniffles to actual tears, and Harmony's frown grew larger as Hermione bumped into Harry as she hurried away. "I think she heard you." She heard Harry note as she began following Hermione, not that they could leave very quickly given the crowd.

Ron's voice was shaking slightly as he watched them leave "So? She must've noticed she's got no friends." Harmony's hand actually rose a bit before she unclenched her fist, putting it back down as she exhaled deeply, punching him out wasn't worth getting in trouble for.

Hermione didn't turn up for the afternoon classes, and Harmony was only not worried because she knew Hermione was in the first-floor girls' bathroom crying and wanted to be left alone. She would go get her during dinner and get her over her situation, since she knew Hermione needed some time to vent, not trained to let it be the way Harmony had been trained. She grabbed a plateful of food for herself and another for her twin before leaving the well-decorated Great Hall.

She found Hermione in the first-floor girls' bathroom, still sniffling. Harmony shoved the food at her and ordered her to eat, and Hermione obeyed. As soon as she finished, the already-waiting Harmony started speaking "you need to let it go, sis, there is nothing wrong with not being friends with a bunch of morons. If they don't like you for yourself, they don't deserve to be your friends."

Their conversation was abruptly cut short as Harmony noticed the cup of water she had brought and put on the countertop near a sink was showing ripples even though neither of them were touching the counter. She held up a hand for her sister to be silent and listened. There was a distant, rhythmic thudding, strongly indicative of something on legs coming their way. She ushered Hermione behind what little cover the room had, namely the toilet cubicles, and had her crouch on the toilet to not show her feet to the inbound threat. It sounded big, so Harmony drew her grenade launcher, fitted with a tactical light underneath and short-range rangefinder/scope on top, already loaded with a High Explosive Dual Purpose round, and checked the two rounds still in her pocket.

Hermione opened her mouth to ask something at seeing her older twin pull out something that looked kind of like a gun, but closed it as Harmony held a finger to her mouth. Then her older twin pulled out the collapsing stock of the weapon and raised it to her shoulder from where she crouched inside their large toilet stall, though she was still busy looking out into the open area of the very large washroom using a mirror.

Then, slowly approaching, they heard it, a low grunting, and the shuffling footfalls of gigantic feet. The mountain troll, as Harmony mentally identified it, smelled of old socks and old public bathrooms. It stopped next to their washroom's doorway and peered inside, taking a long moment to make up its tiny mind before slouching slowly into the room through the comparatively small door. It was about three and a half meters tall, with a granite-grey-skinned body, long arms that dragged its large wooden club along the ground, a small bald head, short, tree-trunk-like legs, and flat, horn-covered feet.

The door suddenly began to move, it slammed shut and clicked locked. Someone must have shut the troll in with the twins. The tall creature turned around at the noise to look at the relatively small door it had come in through in puzzlement, and Harmony, knowing how dangerous this creature would be if it found them, went for the power of getting the first strike. She moved sideways out of the doorway of the bathroom cubicle, raised her weapon, gauged the distance at about twenty meters (it WAS a very large washroom…), hunkered her head down a bit to reduce the fragmentation hazard to herself, and fired it at the back of the troll's head.

A 40mm High Explosive Dual Purpose round was propelled by an intermediate-powered 40x50mm cartridge out of the 6-calibre-long barrel, using a high-low propulsion system which greatly cut down on recoil. It, however, missed slightly and hit the troll's back instead as the creature had begun to straighten as Harmony fired. The grenade armed itself at 6 to 10 meters, fortunately, unlike foreign analogues which armed between 14 and 27 meters, as it was designed to have a smaller fragment distribution pattern. Namely, it had almost no fragments thrown rearward, whereas foreign analogues had maximized fragmentation AND HEAT-style armour penetration in their HEDP rounds.

The launcher loaded manually from either side once the loading bolt and indeed, most of the barrel and gun assembly, was pulled _forward_ to expose the chamber, to accommodate for the short length of the compact SI-built Assault and Battle Rifles it was usually fitted to, but also came with a pistol grip for handiness and the possibility of removal for use. The rifles' own included fore-grips were put on mounting rails for good reason, they were almost always removed and their function replaced by the grenade launcher's handgrip, while the trigger grip was further back on the gun but still before the ammo clip. The WGL-40 series launcher's nearest analogue among other factions was the British AG36, but it did not swing out sideways from under a rifle for reloading. It also had ammunition interchange capacity with heavier mounted grenade launchers of the same calibre, an ability almost no one else had in their weapons. As for the dual-spring-columns SI weapons were renowned for, they were absent as the recoil was low enough anyhow and spring columns would have made it unnecessarily complicated to manufacture.

There was an explosion and a roar of pain as the troll, clearly wounded and bleeding but not disabled yet, turned about. Hermione, who had tumbled off the toilet and into the open in shock at the explosion, screamed loudly and shrilly as the enraged troll roared. The troll was knocking sinks off the walls as it made up its mind as to the threat and started advancing toward Hermione. Harmony was chambering another round, but didn't quite finish before she had to dive aside and roll when the troll smashed its club into the ground where she had been a moment ago. Yanking the loading bolt and most of the barrel assembly BACK to lock the round in place (her shoulder was hurting from absorbing the impact, given she couldn't brace too much with her arms if she didn't want to drop the grenade being loaded).

The doors were pulled open again and Harry and Ron ran inside, Harmony registered this before the troll could figure out where she went, and watched as the troll began to advance on Hermione, thinking she was Harmony, not surprising given they were identical twins. "Confuse it!" Harry yelled desperately to Ron, grabbing a tap knocked off the wall recently he hurled it against an exposed metal pipe as hard as he could. The troll stopped a few meters from Hermione, looking around stupidly for the source of the noise, seeing Harry it turned about, lifting its club as it came toward him. Ron distracted it again with a yell, and Harry ran around it, grabbing Hermione and trying to drag her away. However, he was too physically weak and she was too scared to move. Harmony was occupied trying to figure out a pattern to the troll's movements to get in a shot on its head, so she couldn't go grab Hermione and run for it.

The troll roared again and started toward Ron, who was nearest and had no way to escape. Before Harmony could fire, Harry leapt far enough to fasten his arms around the troll's neck from behind and ram part of his wand up one of the troll's nostrils. Howling with pain, not in the least as Harry was kneeing its previous back injury, the troll tried to shake Harry off. Harmony kept her weapon sighted on the troll's head, if Harry fell…

Hermione had sunk to the floor in terror, and Ron pulled out his own wand, shouting "_Wingardium Leviosa!_"

Surprisingly to everyone, the troll's club flew out of the grasp of its owner, high into the air (the first floor rooms were all as high as the Great Hall), bounced off the ceiling, and with a loud and welcome crack, onto its owner's head. The troll swayed on the spot, Harry falling off from the tremor of the club hitting the troll's head, and fell flat on its face. Harmony blinked, toggled the safety on, locked the safety, and holstered her grenade launcher, retrieving her pack of detonator sections and the one C4 block she had with her from inside her robes "Everyone get clear, I'm going to kill the damned thing!" Harmony commanded, having assembled the detonator for the only C4 brick she was currently carrying. She set it to Channel 54, signal 1234, and pressed it into the C4 plastic explosive brick. Shoving the brick into the troll's gaping mouth discreetly, she ran over to them (Harry had retrieved his wand as soon as the troll fell) and pushed the button on her transmitter. It was testament to how reinforced a troll's body was that only its head exploded in a bloody mess from a full 500 grams of C4.

At 91% RDX, 5.3% diethylhexyl or dioctyl sebacate plasticizer, and 2.1% polyisobutylene binder, 500 grams of C4 plastic explosives equalled 455 g of RDX, equivalent to 680 grams of TNT in explosive power. This was equal to about 2.9 megajoules of energy output, accounting for the energy given by the plasticizer and binder burning. It was enough to, with an internal explosion, destroy the head of the troll. Still, Harmony had, just before pressing the button, tried to fire a _Bombarda_ at the troll, but that spell fizzled out before she could make contact. However, the point was made and it seemed she had used the Blasting Hex to kill the troll.

* * *

A/N: Above numbers from Wikipedia.

* * *

There was a sudden slamming and loud footsteps and the four of them looked up in alarm. They had been making quite a racket, someone must have heard the crashes and the troll's roars. A moment later, Professor McGonagall, closely followed by Snape and Quirrell, burst into the room. Quirrell took one look at the troll's remains, and sat down shakily against the wall, clutching his chest.

Snape and McGonagall were both leant over the troll, obviously wondering how they had killed it. McGonagall then fixed the four Gryffindors with a furious glare, her lips white with anger "What on earth were you thinking of? You're lucky you weren't killed. Why aren't you in your dormitory?"

Snape gave Harry a swift, piercing look, and Potter looked down at the floor. Harmony gestured to Hermione to speak up first "Please, Professor, they were looking for me."

McGonagall almost didn't believe her eyes, since Hermione had NEVER gotten herself in trouble before, and neither had her twin "Miss Granger, Miss Shepard?"

"I was crying in the bathroom and my sister was comforting me, she even brought me some food from the feast. We were talking when we heard the troll outside and tried to hide. However, the troll entered and tried to attack us. That was when Harry and Ron came in, they were coming to warn us about the troll. We distracted it, then Ron knocked it out with its own club and a Hover Charm. After that, we blew up the troll's head just to be safe."

McGonagall frowned "And how exactly did you blow up the troll's head?"

"Blasting Hex, fired with the wand tip pointed directly into the troll's mouth." Harmony stated matter-of-factly. Harry and Ron tried very hard to make it look like this story was not new to them, though both were still utterly astonished that that bookish know-it-all twins would lie for them, though to both of them she had only lied with regards to the point-in-mouth thing.

McGonagall frowned, but eventually nodded, accepting the plausible response and not thinking too much deeper "Well, I still say you were lucky, not many first-years could have taken on a full-grown mountain troll, You each win Gryffindor fifteen points." She threw a look at Snape that suggested he had better not dare complain about her point-giving "Professor Dumbledore will be informed of this. You may go."

"Thank you, Professor, see you later, Professors." Harmony said politely, inclining her head in respect to each of them. The four of them didn't speak again until they had climbed two floors up, just being away from the smell of the critter was a relief.

"It was nice of you to get us out of trouble like that." Ron told Hermione and Harmony. "Though we did help out…"

"They might not have needed help if we hadn't locked the troll in with them, and besides, Harmony seemed like she was doing perfectly fine on her own fighting the troll. She'd already done some damage to it, and that last spell she used really did the job." Harry said.

They reached the portrait of the Fat Lady and stepped in to find the rest of the House eating the food that had been sent up. None of them had looked at each other except Harmony(who'd looked at everybody) yet, ever since they left the bathroom. Still not looking at each other, the three less militant members muttered "Thanks" and went their separate ways. However, from that moment on, Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter became friends of the twins, there were some things that couldn't be done together without becoming buddies, and killing a 3.5-meter mountain troll seemed to be one of them.

Interestingly, Harry and Ron continued to believe that Harmony had used magic to kill the troll, even after Hermione had managed to wheedle the fact that she'd brought muggle weapons to school to defend herself with. Harmony absolutely refused to tell her any more beyond the fact that Mom and Dad were aware of this, then swore her to secrecy. "I haven't murdered Malfoy yet, that should tell you I'm only using them for defence" had been sufficient to persuade Hermione that she was actually not going to use them offensively. So, Hermione hadn't reported any of it to anyone. It seemed that even Harry thought she must have used magic as _Hogwarts: A History_ said muggle technology didn't work around Hogwarts. This was absolute bullshit. Yes, there was EM interference and it required high-powered transmissions to penetrate at all, but the laws of physics still applied as long as they were not actively being circumvented. However, wizard-kind didn't appear to believe in the laws of nature or science, which meant if there was ever a major clash of wizard and muggle, wizards would lose miserably.

Hermione became a lot more relaxed about rule-breaking after the incident, while Harmony remained apathetic. The day before Harry's first Quidditch match, the fur of them were out in the freezing courtyard getting some fresh air during break, with three of them standing with their backs to a bright blue fire, conjured by Hermione, that could be carried around in a jam jar. Surprisingly, through it was quite warm to them, the jam jar itself was not hot the touch, which meant it had to be radiating at a frequency that was minimally absorbed by the silicon-oxygen bonds in glass but which had no problem heating flesh. This meant it was probably microwave radiation with lower-powered blue emissions, below ten watts of soft blue light, for a high emission band.

It was at that moment that Snape decided to cross the yard, Harmony noting his limp. The other three of their quartet closed formation around the fire, sure it would be against the rules. Snape limped over however, seeing the obvious guilty faces (Harmony looked as bored and emotionless as she usually did). Snape didn't notice the fire but seemed to be looking for an excuse to pick on them. "What's that you've got there, Potter?" Harry showed the book he had, _Quidditch Through the Ages_, "Library books are not to be taken outside the school, give it to me. Five points from Gryffindor."

"He's just made that rule up, wonder what's wrong with his leg?" Harry commented angrily as Snape stumped off.

"Dunno, but I hope it's really hurting him." Ron sounded rather bitter.

* * *

Later, Harry came back from trying to get his book back and told them what he'd seen of Snape's injuries "You know what this means? He tried to get past that three-headed dog at Halloween! That's where he was going when we saw him—he's after whatever it's guarding! And I'd bet my broomstick he let that troll in, to make a diversion!"

"No — he wouldn't," Hermione said with a shake of her head and a frown. "I know he's not very nice, but he wouldn't try and steal something Dumbledore was keeping safe."

Ron snorted rather rudely "Honestly, Hermione, you think all teachers are saints or something, I'm with Harry. I wouldn't put anything past Snape. But what's he after? What's that dog guarding?"

"It seems a bit too obvious, though, it could be possible that he suspected someone else and went over to check on the three-headed dog to make sure no one else could try to get past while the troll distracted most of the staff." Harmony thought aloud once she knew the other shad finished speaking, looking at the incredulous glances from the two boys. "If Snape was really an infiltrator after whatever the dog's guarding, he wouldn't act so mean toward students, that draws too much attention, and he wouldn't have worked as a sleeper agent for so long, given he had no idea the object would come to Hogwarts, ever. It would be much more likely for the culprit to be someone relatively new here, or whose behaviour this year or these two years is different from what those who knew him or her would expect."

"We don't know anyone here for more than this year, at least, no one that could be involved in this. It's not like Percy would have the guts to go against authority and figure out what the dog's guarding, then go after it. It's not possible for him to break into Gringotts, or even to think of doing it." Ron was smirking at the thought of the uptight Percy breaking into a bank of all places. "I still bet on Snape."

"That lack of alternatives IS a problem…" Harmony stated, conceding defeat for now.

* * *

The next morning was bright and cold, the Great Hall filling with the unhealthy odour of fried sausages (as if sausages were not too-oily enough on their own). Everyone seemed to be looking forward to a good Quidditch match.

"You've got to eat some breakfast." Harmony knew she was harassing Harry a bit with how many times she'd pestered him, but she didn't care, the boy was being a moron about this.

"I don't want anything."

"Just a bit of toast." Hermione was on his other side trying to shove food into his face.

"I'm not hungry." He was obviously so nervous he couldn't even arm himself for the coming confrontation, which according to all the training Harmony had was at best unadvisable and at worst disastrous, especially once the confrontation actually began.

"Harry, you need your strength, Seekers are always the ones who get clobbered by the other team." That was Seamus Finnigan, he had come out and told Harry what Harmony had been trying not to throw in his face (she had been about to crack, but he got there first).

"Thanks, Seamus," Harry grumbled, watching Seamus put ketchup onto his sausages.

* * *

By 1100 hours, the whole school seemed to be out in the stands around the Quidditch pitch, many muggle-born or half-blood students with binoculars while pure-bloods had telescoping spyglasses. The seats, though up in the air, still had difficulties seeing the action at times.

Ron, Hermione, Neville, Seamus and Dean took up seats in the top row, they had made what Harmony thought to be a ridiculous but certainly motivational banner from a sheet Scabbers had ruined. It read _Potter For President_, with Dean's artistic skills producing a large Gryffindor lion underneath, and Hermione doing a tricky charm so that the paint flashed different colours. Harmony found by staring at it that the intensity of the colours seemed to change depending on the colour. It was dimmer when violet or even blue and was brightest when red or orange. This wasn't unexpected assuming this charm for once did not violate conservation of energy, it would produce more red photons than violet from the original reflection of sunlight by the paint, and the human eye would perceive that as being brighter.

The referee, Madam Hooch, was having a pre-game talk with both teams in the center of the field. Once she finished, a magically amplified voice came from seemingly everywhere around the field at once. "Mount your brooms, please." Fifteen brooms rose up high into the air, and it began.

"And the Quaffle is taken immediately by Angelina Johnson of Gryffindor—what an excellent Chaser that girl is, and rather attractive, too—" The commentator was saying while Harmony was turning her head this way and that, trying to localize the sources of the sound. She finally determined it to be coming from under everyone's seats, via magic.

"JORDAN!" McGonagall's voice bellowed.

"Sorry, Professor." It seemed that Lee Jordan was just as mischievous as his friends the Weasley twins. It was therefore not surprising that he was closely watched by McGonagall as he commentated. "And she's really belting along up there, a neat pass to Alicia Spinnet, a good find of Oliver Wood's, last year only a reserve—back to Johnson and—no, the Slytherins have taken the Quaffle, Slytherin Captain Marcus Flint gains the Quaffle and off he goes—Flint flying like an eagle up there—he's going to sc- no, stopped by an excellent move by Gryffindor Keeper Wood and the Gryffindors take the Quaffle—that's Chaser Katie Bell of Gryffindor there, nice dive around Flint, off up the field and—OUCH—that must have hurt, hit in the back of the head by a Bludger—Quaffle taken by the Slytherins—that's Adrian Pucey speeding off toward the goal posts, but he's blocked by a second Bludger—sent his way by Fred or George Weasley, can't tell which—nice play by the Gryffindor Beater, anyway, and Johnson back in possession of the Quaffle, a clear field ahead and off she goes—she's really flying—dodges a speeding Bludger—the goal posts are ahead—come on, now, Angelina—Keeper Bletchley dives—misses—GRYFFINDORS SCORE!"

"I didn't say this earlier to spare Harry's feelings, but this is the most retarded game ever devised by someone over the age of ten." Harmony was saying to Hermione while Jordan was yapping and the crowd following the action. "The Chasers and Keepers are basically to keep the crowd entertained while the Seekers do all the work, given that the Snitch is worth fifteen goals…"

"I agree, but don't let Ron hear you that."

Harmony frowned "And why not?"

"It would be impolite."

"I am disappointed, sister, it is so obvious how flawed this system is that it's no longer amusing. It should really change."

Hermione snorted "Do you care enough about Quidditch to change it for the better?"

Harmony smirked "You know me too well…"

They didn't speak again until after Gryffindor's first cheer, when Hagrid came along with a "Budge up there, move along."

"Hagrid!" Ron exclaimed in recognition. Harmony and Hermione squeezed together to give Hagrid enough space to join them.

"Bin watchin' from me hut," Hagrid pointed at the large pair of binoculars around his neck "but it isn't the same as bein' in the crowd. No sign of the Snitch yet, eh?"

Ron shook his head "Nope, Harry hasn't had much to do yet."

"Kept outta trouble, though, that's somethin'" Hagrid murmured, raising his binoculars and peering skyward at Harry, who was a mere speck in the distance.

Harmony was sinking into a stupor when things picked up. "Slytherin in possession, Chaser Pucey ducks two Bludgers, two Weasleys, and Chaser Bell, and speeds toward the—wait a moment—was that the Snitch?"

Adrian Pucey actually dropped the Quaffle, too busy looking over his shoulder. The flash of gold that was the Snitch had just passed his left ear.

Harry and the Slytherin seeker were hurtling toward the Snitch neck to neck, with Harry having the advantage. That advantage was lost however when Marcus Flint blocked Harry on purpose, and Harry's broom spun off course. Harmony frowned, apparently the magical energy fields involved in brooms also made them have an impact resistance field that was essentially body-covering for the user. A roar of rage echoed from the Gryffindors around her and they scream ed as one "FOUL!"

Madam Hooch awarded Gryffindor a penalty shot, which was easy to score, but of course, the Golden Snitch had disappeared again. Dean was still yelling from near the twins "Send him off,

ref! Red card!"

"What are you talking about, Dean?" Ron sounded bewildered.

"Red card!" Dean was fuming. "In soccer you get shown the red card and you're out of the game!"

"But this isn't soccer, Dean." Ron reminded him with an eye-roll.

"They oughta change the rules. Flint coulda knocked Harry outta the air." Even Hagrid agreed there was something very, very wrong with this stupid game.

Lee resumed commentating "So—after that obvious and disgusting bit of cheating—"

"Jordan!" growled Professor McGonagall.

"I mean, after that open and revolting foul —"

"_Jordan, I'm warning you _—"

"All right, all right. Flint nearly kills the Gryffindor Seeker, which could happen to anyone, I'm sure, so a penalty to Gryffindor, taken by Spinnet, who puts it away, no trouble, and we continue play, Gryffindor still in possession." Jordan said sarcastically. Harmony went back to the book she'd brought to occupy her time as the commentary continued "Slytherin in possession—Flint with the Quaffle—passes Spinnet—passes Bell—hit hard in the face by a Bludger, hope it broke his nose—only joking, Professor—Slytherins score—oh no…"

Harmony's attention was abruptly drawn back to the match by Hagrid "Dunno what Harry thinks he's doing, If I didn' know better, I'd say he'd lost control of his broom… but he can't have…" Suddenly, people were pointing at Harry from all over the stands, and Harmony started sweeping the crowds with her binoculars, looking for someone who might be cursing Harry's broom. In the opposing set of stands (there were only two sets, one on either side of the game, as the stadium was mostly unoccupied, the population of students was far lower than a few decades ago after all) in the highest occupied row, Snape was staring at Harry, muttering under his breath, but some columns of seats away, so was Quirrell… "Snape, look, and Quirrell too, they have to be jinxing Harry's broom, I'll go deal with them both, just in case."

Hermione nodded at her sister as Harmony shot off across the stands to make her way around most of the pitch. "Did something happen to it when Flint blocked him?" Seamus asked.

"Can't have," Hagrid said, his voice shaking. "Can't nothing interfere with a broomstick except powerful Dark magic—no kid could do that to a Nimbus Two Thousand."

"Harmony's gone to deal with Snape and Quirrell, both of them are staring at Harry and muttering, look." Hermione told them.

"Snape's jinxing the broom and Quirrell's trying to save Harry." Ron declared.

"Harmony seemed so sure Snape wasn't guilty though…" Hermione bit her lip as she watched her twin race around the perimeter of the field toward the opposite stands. She looked up at Harry again through her binoculars. His broom was vibrating so hard it was almost impossible for him to hang on much longer. The whole crowd was on its feet, watching in horror. The Weasley twins, the Gryffindor Beaters, flew up and tried to pull Harry safely onto one of their brooms, but every time they got near him his broom would jump higher still. They dropped and circled below him, hoping to catch him if he fell. Marcus Flint, in the meantime, seized the Quaffle and scored five times without anyone noticing.

Harmony slowed to a walk as she moved past behind Snape, whipping out her eight-inch titanium wand and casting the blue flames Hermione had taught her how to do the previous night, aiming it at the bottom of Snape's robes. Next, as she walked away, Harmony drew out her folding shovel and unfolded it, by the time she was done with that, she stood in the row just behind Quirrell, who was in the topmost occupied row on his side of the stadium. After locking it into place, she aimed a full-strength swing at the back of Quirrell's head with the heavy end and knocked him out in a single hit. A second alter a yelp and "Aguamenti!" told her that Snape had also been distracted from staring at Harry. She couldn't afford to only take one out, for fear she would take out the wrong one and Harry would fall. The downside was that they were still not sure who was cursing Harry as both had been taken out in quick succession.

"Neville, you can look!" Ron told the boy who'd been sobbing into Hagrid's jacket for the last five minutes as Harry's broom stabilized.

Harry was diving toward the ground when the crowd saw him clap his hand to his mouth as if he was going to vomit. Hitting the field on all fours he coughed and something gold fell into his hand. "I've got the Snitch!" He shouted, waving it above his head.

Harmony was the first on the scene as she hadn't started climbing the stairs to the stands yet, so she was still on the ground and ran over to Harry first. Hermione, Ron and Hagrid surged down the stairs, and they whisked Harry away for a cup of strong tea in Hagrid's hut.

"It was Snape." Ron was explaining to Harry "Hermione and I saw him. He was cursing your broomstick, muttering, he wouldn't take his eyes off you."

"Rubbish, why would Snape do somethin' like that?" Hagrid questioned, not having heard what they were talking about back in the stadium next to him.

Harmony shrugged at Harry "I don't know, but when I knocked Quirrell out your broomstick didn't calm down right away, it only did that a moment later, when Snape noticed he was on fire." She thought the evidence was against Snape, but his behaviour just didn't fit.

Harry looked at his friends before deciding he should tell Hagrid the truth "I found out something about him," he told Hagrid. "He tried to get past that three-headed dog on Halloween. It bit him. We think he was trying to steal whatever it's guarding."

Hagrid dropped the teapot with a clunk onto the table "How do you know about Fluffy?"

"The obvious way, we walked into the wrong hallway." Harmony commented dryly, Hagrid rolled his eyes at her for that.

Ron, however, was focused on something else "_Fluffy_?"

"Yeah—he's mine—bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub las' year—I lent him to Dumbledore to guard the—"

"Yes?" Harry asked eagerly.

"Now, don't ask me anymore, that's top secret, that is."

"But Snape's trying to _steal _it."

"Rubbish," Hagrid repeated. "Snape's a Hogwarts teacher, he'd do nothin' of the sort."

"So why did he just try and kill Harry?" Hermione demanded. Harmony remained silent as she was still undecided whether or was Snape or Quirrell. The latter being the one to announce the troll in the dungeons didn't help his case, since that could just be part of his distraction plan. "I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid, I've read all about them! You've got to keep eye contact, and Snape wasn't blinking at all, I saw him!"

"I'm tellin' yeh, yer wrong!" Hagrid said hotly "I don' know why Harry's broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn' try an' kill a student! Now, listen to me, all three of yeh—yer meddlin' in things that don' concern yeh. It's dangerous. You forget that dog, an' you forget what it's guardin', that's between Professor Dumbledore an' Nicolas Flamel—"

"Aha! So there's someone called Nicolas Flamel involved, is there?" Harry declared triumphantly. Hagrid looked very pissed off with himself at letting that information loose. The conversation was turned onto safer topics after that, and soon, the four youngsters headed back up to the castle.

* * *

A/N: REVIEW!


	7. A Mirror Darkly

A/N: In the Ministry Classification of Magical Creatures, Harmony would be currently rated, if she were to be rated, XX for "Harmless/May Be Domesticated", right? By the end of this series I suspect she'll be XXXXX for "Known Wizard Killer/Impossible To Domesticate". Hell, I suspect she'll be there by the start of Fourth Year given the nature of the riot at the Quidditch World Cup campsite and the fact that she'll be qualified to operate a Battle Rifle and snipe by that age (she'd be full-grown in height at about 177-180 cm depending on time of day, slightly shorter than her mother and Aunt Hannah are, but whatever).

Oh, and Harmony is, a majority of the time, Paragon objectives with Renegade methods, for those who want a morality assessment.

* * *

Chapter 7: A Mirror Darkly

Harmony was delighted to find she had two full weeks to check and finalize her current map of the castle, which included noting the times and locations of the various doors, corridors and staircases. Over Christmas Break she also had time to type more Word documents into her laptop (EMP-buffered/shielded electronics were able to resist the EM interference of magic with no problem whatsoever, powered by the high-efficiency solar panel she'd brought to Hogwarts in her trunk) of library books from the school. She was slowly working her way through them section by section, author last name by author last name, and though she was a fast typist, there was still a LOT of stuff… As for the map, she couldn't usually record staircase or hallway changes that occurred during class hours, hence she signed up to stay at school over the holidays. Her mother had approved of this idea and now here she was, sitting at her table in Potions and resisting the urge to roll her eyes, while Malfoy commented, sneering at her upon hearing that she was staying over the holidays "I do feel so sorry, for all the filth that have to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because they're not wanted at home."

Ron and his brothers were staying too, as their parents had gone to visit his brother Charlie in Romania. Hermione, on the other hand, was going home to her parents and questioned Harmony on why she wasn't coming. "Because I think staying over the Christmas Holidays will actually get some extra studying done, and maybe make sure the boys actually get something done on the whole Nicholas Flamel investigation while you're away. Heaven knows they never do jack when you're gone…"

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that…"

"Don't worry about it, sis, Mom and Dad know I can take care of myself if there's any trouble." She patted her waist holsters and Hermione flinched a little.

"I still think it was dangerous and rather irresponsible of them to give you such dangerous weapons."

"I trained under professionals, Hermione, I know how to handle these things, and it's not like I'd let anyone else near them, not even you, Hermione, since you aren't trained."

When they left the dungeons at the end of Potions, they found a large fir tree blocking the ground-floor hallway. The large feet sticking out at the bottom and loud breathing announced Hagrid's presence behind it.

Ron stuck his head through the branches as best he could "Hi, Hagrid, want any help?"

"Nah, I'm all right, thanks, Ron."

Malfoy's cold drawl came from behind them "Would you mind moving out of the way? Are you trying to earn some extra money, Weasley? Hoping to be gamekeeper yourself when you leave Hogwarts, I suppose—that hut of Hagrid's must seem like a palace compared to what your family's used to." Ron tried to dive at Malfoy, but Harmony caught him by the back of his robes and barely managed to not lose her footing as she dragged him back.

Snape chose this time to ascend the stairs "SHEPARD! WEASLEY!"

Harmony merely turned her head around and raised an eyebrow, as if daring Snape to say something more at how Ron was gnashing his teeth and clawing in the air at Malfoy.

"He was provoked, Professor Snape, Malfoy was insulting his family, and Harmony here's holding him back from beating Malfoy up." Hagrid smiled at Harmony from where his head was sticking out from behind the tree.

"Be that as it may, fighting is against Hogwarts rules, Hagrid, five points from Gryffindor, Weasley, and be grateful it isn't more. Move along, all of you." Snape said smoothly.

Harmony rolled her eyes, this was, of course, expected behaviour for Snape. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle shoved their way past the tree, scattering needles everywhere and smirking. It was too bad the needles were still healthy, since if they'd been dry it could have been quite painful for Malfoy and his cronies.

"I'll get him… one of these days, I'll get him…" Ron was grinding his teeth at Malfoy's retreating back.

"I hate them both, Malfoy and Snape." Harry commented bitterly.

Hermione and Harmony rolled their eyes in unison this time.

"Come on, cheer up, it's nearly Christmas," Hagrid said jovially. "Tell yeh what, come with me an' see the Great Hall, looks a treat."

The four of them had nothing better to do, so they followed Hagrid and his tree to the Great Hall where McGonagall and Flitwick were busy with Christmas décor. "Ah, Hagrid, the last tree—put it in the far corner, would you?"

The hall had twelve towering Christmas trees, festoons of holly and mistletoe all around the walls, and was even more decorated than usual. Harmony didn't care for it, since decorations were not exactly her thing.

"How many days you got left until yer holidays?" Hagrid asked after setting the tree down.

Hermione finally spoke, having mostly recovered from her urge to attack Malfoy for his insolence "Just one, and that reminds me — Harry, Ron, we've got half an hour before lunch, we should be in the library."

"Oh yeah, you're right." Ron seemed to suddenly jerk awake at the sound of Hermione's voice from his stupor of watching Flitwick string golden bubbles blossoming from his wand all over the branches of the new Christmas tree.

"The library? Just before the holidays? Bit keen, aren't yeh?" Hagrid asked with some interest as he followed them from the Great Hall "Mean, I spected it from Hermione and Harmony, but…"

"Oh, we're not working," Harry told him in a bright voice, though Harmony's opinion of his intelligence declined steeply with his revelation of critical information. "Ever since you mentioned Nicolas Flamel we've been trying to find out who he is"

Hagrid looked shocked "You _what _Listen here—I've told yeh—drop it. It's nothin' to you what that dog's guardin'."

"We just want to know who Nicolas Flamel is, that's all." Hermione stated. Harmony couldn't believe her sister, did she have no concept of operational secrecy?

…Right, who was she kidding?

"Unless you'd like to tell us and save us the trouble? We must've been through hundreds of books already and we can't find him anywhere — just give us a hint — I know I've read his name somewhere." Harry asked hopefully.

"I'm sayin' nothin'," Hell, even _Hagrid_ was more competent at operational secrecy than Hermione right now…

"Just have to find out for ourselves, then." Ron said as they left Hagrid there looking annoyed, and hurried off to the library.

The problem was that it was hard to know where to begin, because they didn't know jack about how Flamel could have gotten into a book. He wasn't in _Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century, _or _Notable Magical Names of Our Time_; he was missing, too, from _Important Modern Magical Discoveries,_ and _A Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry._ The sheer size of the library itself didn't help either, with hundreds of thousands of books on thousands of shelves arranged in dozens of columns and rows. It would be much easier if the information was all entered into a computer database, they could just word-search for Flamel… That of course was why Harmony had been painstakingly cranking shelf after shelf of self-sorting books into her computer, so that she could search her hard drive for a certain word and find it and associated documents immediately.

Hermione had a list of subjects and titles she thought they ought to search, Ron was pulling books off the shelves at random, and Harry wandered over toward the Restricted Section. Sadly in Harmony's opinion, you needed a specially signed note from a teacher to look in any of the restricted books, and they'd probably never get one. Most of said books were full of powerful Dark Magic never taught at Hogwarts, only read by older students studying advanced Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Unfortunately, Harry was soon shooed out for not knowing what he was looking for by the librarian, Madam Pince. Harmony thought this was stupid as students weren't allowed to wander around and find a book to read for fun, which meant they couldn't learn as much or as fast. However, Harry had stressed not asking Madam Pince about Flamel in case Snape heard what they were up to. They had been looking for two weeks, but they hadn't found anything, even with Harmony's growing database using all their free time. It didn't take long until they gave up and headed down to lunch together.

"You will keep looking while I'm away, won't you?" Hermione shot her older twin a look that said _"You'd better make sure they keep looking."_ Harmony merely smiled back "Send me an owl if you find anything."

"And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is, it'd be safe to ask them." Ron quipped.

Hermione nodded "Very safe, Dad's a dentist and Mom's an office worker." That was technically accurate, though Hermione didn't know that her mother was technically co-head of a major world power, well, she _did_ work a lot in an office, right?

* * *

_Shepard Family UK Residence, Great Britain, Specific Location Classified_

Hermione had been perfectly cheerful and happy to see her parents again, accepting a big hug from both of them at once and wearing a shit-eating grin on her face for most of the day. That lasted right up until she remembered the fact that her older twin was armed enough to probably murder half the castle. "Mom, Dad, we need to talk, it's about Harmony."

Her parents shared a look "Hermione, we can talk bout this once we get home, there are some things that must remain secret."

Once they got home from King's Cross Station, she pretty much pounced on her parents "Why does Harmony have a gun and explosives?"

"While you were doing piano, art and dance for your extracurriculars, Harmony wanted to learn how to use a weapon in case she needed to defend herself." This was, of course, the truth. "She wanted to eventually become a power to be reckoned with in the world like Hannah Shepard is today, so, we managed to get some old ex-military friends of mine to tutor her, and as for the explosives, they were a parting gift from her tutors in case she ran into something really dangerous."

"But…" Hermione couldn't deny that Harmony's weapons training had probably saved both their lives with the Troll Incident, and that softened her indignation somewhat, but she was still worried "but what about the gun laws?"

Jane laughed at that "Sweetie, if you know the right people, you can get a license to do just about anything, as long as you don't flaunt it in people's faces. Harmony is trained to not use her weapons unless she or others are in mortal or potentially mortal danger."

Hermione opened her mouth, thinking about asking just where Harmony had learnt it all from, but then thought better of it, since her mother would probably not tell her anyhow. "Thanks Mom for explaining this to me." She leaned on her mother's shoulder on the sofa, and Jane ruffled her daughter's bushy brown hair, inherited from her father but perhaps a shade closer to ochre due to Jane's straight blood-red hair.

"No problem, baby girl, no problem."

"Dinner's ready pumpkin!" Dan Granger called from the kitchen. He'd volunteered for dinner as soon as they'd gotten home (his wife had frowned and stuck her tongue out at him for fobbing the explanation job off on her). The mother and daughter pair would spend some more time bonding over the Christmas holidays, since the family dynamic had for the past three or four years been that Hermione was Daddy's girl and Harmony spent her time with Jane.

* * *

_Christmas Holidays, Hogwarts, Northern Scotland_

Unfortunately, once the holidays started, the boys took to lazing around all day and Harmony had to haul up the piles of books from the library and force the boys to help her read through them. The fact that she mostly either stayed in her dorms to type more books into her computer or went wandering the castle to check over her tactical map didn't help enforce discipline. Whenever she failed to enforce her power upon them, the boys spent hours eating anything they could spear on a toasting fork, Bread, English Muffins, marshmallows, etc. and plotting ways to get Malfoy expelled, which were fun to talk about even if they wouldn't work. Ron also began to teach Harry how to play Wizard Chess, where the pieces moved and talked. He was a very good chess player, whereas Harry was decidedly _not_. Harmony played Ron five times in a row one day and was astonished to lose four matches. Usually she did much better. The final tally for the holidays would come to twenty-seven matches won by Ron and ten matches by Harmony. Ron was even more astonished at losing than Harmony was. However, she bet in her mind that he didn't have the reaction speeds needed to plan on the fly in, say, a game of StarCraft…

On Christmas morning, Harmony was irritated to find presents not only from Hermione (a box of Chocolate Frogs) and Ron, but also from her parents, she wasn't a baby anymore! However her ire faded upon seeing it was a new battery pack for her high-powered radio set (equipped with a radio dish now that she had locked onto a direction to transmit in, shielding her dorm from the radiation source) and a new battery for her laptop. It came with a note to call home for the rest of her Christmas present that night. She thought of waking the boys for more Flamel-hunting, but thought better of it as it was not suitable for Christmas morning, hence she trooped down to breakfast in the Great Hall alone.

On the other hand, maybe today was the day she was going to reduce Ron's appetite a bit, he was eating an unhealthy amount all the time… Ron had been foolish enough to give her a box of Bertie Blotts' Every Flavour Beans along with a note that had read "When they say every flavour, they mean it, George reckons he had a bogey-flavoured one once."

As long as the air quality was good and one wasn't sick, Harmony knew boogers and snot didn't taste too bad. This was due to experience as once her nose had felt a bit clogged (beyond what holing up in the bathroom and picking her nose could reach) and she'd sniffled so hard something reached the back of her mouth, she'd chewed on it a couple times absently (after all, something coming from inside her couldn't be toxic, as she hadn't tried anything dangerous recently so nothing risky could be lodged anywhere, right?) before realizing what it was. She'd already swallowed by that point, but still, it didn't taste that bad, just a bit slimy or chewy, probably depending on the dryness of the booger in question.

* * *

A/N: This actually happened to me once, I didn't realize what it was until after I swallowed it. It didn't taste like anything, on the other hand, snot tastes really bad when one is sick.

* * *

Harmony's plan to prevent Ron form eating too much at breakfast worked as he only ate a ham sandwich before refusing anymore food (Harry refused to eat altogether). Unfortunately, the Weasley boy still didn't like vegetables, which were good for him, but she couldn't wish for so much at once… The truly astounding thing was that she'd gotten the whole Weasley family to eat less with that story of the booger, and Percy looked rather green. Fred was still trying to snap George out of a catatonic state when she left the table.

Christmas dinner was, as per expected, again bursting with the unexpected, including wizard crackers that discharged all sorts of things when pulled. Harmony didn't partake much in those festivities though, instead thinking about the conversation she was going to have with her mother alone in her dorm (all the other girls had gone home) that night. She went up to bed the earliest of all, and turned her satellite radio on, having left it to charge in the sun through the folding solar panel she'd brought. Five minutes later, her mother finally answered. "How are you doing, sweetheart?"

"Great, Mom, thanks for the new back-up battery packs, sorry I didn't get you anything."

"That's fine baby, just stay safe, that's all I can ask for."

"By the way, Mom, did you follow up on some of those leads we have from the reference books we got? You told me you would tell me about your progress around Christmas."

"Yep, I got permission from the Allied Nuclear Weaponry Management Council for a Strategic Clean-Nuke Concept Test on the Isle of Drear off northern Scotland. The wizards made it impossible to pinpoint on a map drawn by a person or by magic, and impossible to approach on the ground or any altitude below about ten kilometres, but that's the limit of the cylinder-shell protection they put around it. So, it is not impossible to find on a satellite or even high-level aerial photo, though the area was under lockdown by the British Government for the longest time even when it was discovered, due to the Quintapeds living there. We're about to do some cleaning up of Wizardkind's messes."

"When is the test scheduled? And what delivery platform?"

"The missile carrying the warheads will be fired from one of our North Atlantic Missile Submarine Fleet boats. It is a missile specially configured to drop nearly vertically toward the target, designed to defeat hardened facilities situated in the bottoms of deep canyons. I can push the big red button anytime from eight to twelve PM tonight, actually. The night-time makes it easier to measure the flash and estimate the yield of our new technology and compare it to the fallout profile."

"I suspect the Americans aren't too happy given quite a few of their missile silos are in the Grand Canyon and they think you're designing this missile mod to hit them." Harmony stated dryly.

"You successfully gauged the extent of American strategic stupidity. We're allies, they should trust us… of course, we and the powers aligned with us are probably the only Allied powers that aren't too busy kissing America's ass to work toward the betterment of mankind, but… whatever."

"So, uh…It's already eight now…" Harmony said slowly, looking at her clock.

Her mother sounded amused over the radio "Precisely. I'll push it now, if you don't mind."

"Go ahead, Mom."

"Alright, here we go!"

Quite a few minutes later, a distant glow on the horizon to the north signified the blast occurring and rupturing all psychic fields set up around the island it was tested on. "That should have been eight half-megaton warheads, but each was designed to have the fallout profile and dosage of a 150kT nuke since that was the best we could shave it down to. The point of this Concept Test, at least on my behalf, is to prove this sort of thing doesn't work, unlike what the other Allies are hoping for. Still, it is more than enough to engulf the whole Isle of Drear in the zones of total destruction… It was good that Quintapeds aren't known to burrow into the ground, and that we calibrated the spread of the warheads to ensure maximum annihilation. I hope the Allies are satisfied with our denial of concept and abandon the hope of relatively clean strategic nukes…"

"Well, we've successfully wiped a magical species, excellent. It was about time we destroyed some of the more absurdly hazardous ones. Has there been any progress on how to kill Lethifolds yet?" These were creatures that resembled black cloaks about half an inch thick, though they could be thicker if the Lethifold had recently digested a victim. They used unknown forms of locomotion to creep a meter or so per second along walls and floors seeking their preferred prey, humans. They would smother humans in their sleep and digest them in their beds, and only lived in the tropics.

"We've captured some, analyzed them and they are vaguely similar to placozoans, but much, MUCH larger and more organized, including nutrient storage tissues in the center and a support structure for their skin. They use anti-gravity fields manifested by a web of fibres and tiny nodules embedded in their bodies to move and change directions, and are very resistant to physical impacts, as their strangling feeding habits would suggest. They are however unable to detect much more than the heat level of their immediate surroundings and the psychic emissions of prey. Since the more intelligent or sentient a creature is, the more thoughts and emissions, they tend to go after humans. However, we did find them thoroughly vulnerable to poisoning by isopropyl alcohol, i.e. rubbing alcohol, and they are also quite flammable with some encouragement. However, they are highly resistant to psychic-based attacks and will even repel emulated psychic-based fire blasts. In other words, if you have a flamethrower or an incendiary grenade, you can burn it to death in mere moments. A torch will not be sufficient as the Lethifold could and will smother it before the Lethifold begins to combust, although the creature will suffer pain from this."

"It's that simple? How dumb is wizard-kind?" Obviously, they were too dumb to try the scientific method. Even Hermione, when Harmony had probed her in conversation on the subject, thought that science and magic should probably be kept distinct. If not, according to Hermione, then magic would have a hard time progressing, just knowing of the Laws of Thermodynamics would mean so many spells would never have been considered, and thus not been invented…

"Yes, it is that simple, as I already said, they're easily poisoned to death by isopropyl alcohol, which is not found in nature in liquid form most of the time, at least not in the tropics where Lethifolds usually live. However, Lethifolds are able to deflect anything with a psychic containment field, even fire, though Patronuses terrify and can harm them for some reason." Jane sounded rather happy about this. "I know that wizards are dumb enough to definitely lose any war with us, and that's enough for me."

"Alright, how about Nundus?"

"They weren't that easy to detect, but on thermal photos with a dedicated spy satellite, they weren't that hard either, given they are basically giant versions of leopards. We blew a couple up with laser-guided precision munitions, a 500-kg bomb is adequate to kill one in one shot. However, the resulting biochemical contaminated area will require some time to clean up, since the Nundu apparently generates Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses as its main method of self-defence against humans, in addition to assorted poisonous gases. It's almost a walking cancer factory, assuming you don't die from the other diseases and poisons first."

"Well then that makes sense, a Nundu needs about one hundred wizards at once, and a Blasting Hex should be around the power of half a kilogram of C-4, if we amp up the power of the spells used or the number of them… that means anything over two hundred kilograms of high explosive should be able to kill a Nundu in an alpha strike. We could wipe them out easily to preserve mankind's safety."

"Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated than that, Harmony, we've started a campaign of hunting for 'Terrorists with Weapons of Mass Destruction' as our excuse to be in East Africa, but certain countries, namely the US of A, claim that we are pursuing an aggressive expansionist agenda that is no different from imperialism. The fact that they have the balls to say that, given their foreign policies, is almost surprising to me, even though it shouldn't be a surprise given how bitter our relations have been since Dugan stepped down. Still, they can't deny the fact that after we cordon off an area, we have to clean up the mess of those 'WMDs' right afterward, and fewer people have gotten sick from those diseases since we came in to bomb the Nundus to extinction."

"The _Daily Prophet_ has been reporting on how the Nundus are disappearing from East Africa, and they have no idea why this is. Their best guess is that someone organized a party of at least a few hundred wizards and witches to go hunting for the critters. Hah, given magical creatures are typically really resistant to magic but not most forms of conventional weaponry, dragons aside, killing them off won't be that difficult, and the wizards need not be any the wiser. Fortunately, like Lethifolds, Nundus aren't used in any potions, so it's not hindering anything on this side of the hedge either."

"That brings us to our last problem, werewolves." Jane sighed "That one is difficult at best, we can't effectively counter the evil werewolves without monitoring the entire population of whole nations at once and search for their locations on the night of the full moon and any attacks. It's not doable on our end without huge political repercussions and the very real chance of abuse of power by the people monitoring it."

"Agreed, Mom, we'll just have to see what Hermione can do on this end… because if it comes down to it I'm thinking of scorching a few counties after a rouge werewolf band is reported in the area. That will work if we manage to purge every concentration of a bunch of living things that aren't confirmed residents or confirmed animals. We could use unmanned aerial vehicles to track them from high up, far out of their sight, and spy satellites too…"

"I'll see what I can do on this end too…" Talk between mother and daughter drifted to more mundane topics after that, and it was half an hour before they finished up and cut the com-link.

* * *

The next day, the 26th of December, Harmony read in the Daily Prophet about the total annihilation of the Isle of Drear and the extinction of Quintapeds as a species. The wizarding community was at a loss as to what did it, but since wizards and witches entering the area directly or who were directly downwind became sick and some even died, the area was still declared off-limits and the area immediately downwind, though that was only part of the North Sea, was similarly declared restricted. The main hypothesis was that a large band of wizards, possibly the same ones that had been hunting the Nundus, had cast huge volleys of assorted curses on the island and its inhabitants, including working together on eight occasions to produce huge craters. The Qunitapeds were believed to have cursed the island and part of the surroundings as they died. Harmony wanted to laugh at this but held it in. Muggles convinced themselves otherwise on most occasions when they saw magic, and it seemed that Wizards were even worse, believing firmly that magic was superior to technology.

Harry Potter told them later that same day about a mirror he had found the previous evening, showing him his family, his parents, grandparents, and so on. He wanted to show it to them, using his newly-acquired Invisibility Cloak to get around the castle at night. The place he led them to, after at least half an hour's wandering, looked like an unused classroom with desks and chairs piled against the walls and an upturned litter bin. However, propped against the wall facing them was something that didn't seem to belong, something that looked as if someone had just put it there to store it somewhere for a while. The towering mirror was as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: _Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi_

_I… show not… your face but your heart's… desire?_ Harmony thought with a frown, figuring that mirror puzzles could probably be more intelligible when read backwards. She would give Harry and Ron a couple days to figure this out, but she wanted one look at what her true desire was, just so that she would know, at least.

"See?" Harry whispered as he stood before the mirror.

Ron, standing to one side, frowned "I can't see anything."

Harry gestured at the mirror but didn't look at Ron "Look! Look at them all…there are loads of them…"

"I can only see you." Ron commented in frustration, and it was then that Harmony understood, you had to be in front of the mirror for it to reach into your mind and pull out what you want, so that it could project the image in question into your mind.

"Look in it properly, go on, stand where I am." Harry stepped aside, as before, Harmony could only see the person standing in front of it in their pajamas, or in her case, her black sweater and pants. She frowned a little, it felt like they were being watched… she had learnt to be paranoid a long time ago, she had had to.

"Look at me!" Ron cried out.

"Can you see all your family standing around you?" Harmony rolled her eyes as she awaited her turn.

"No—I'm alone—but I'm different—I look older—and I'm Head Boy!"

"WHAT?" Harry exclaimed in shock. Harmony smirked, he was still as bad as she expected at stealth.

"I am—I'm wearing the badge like Bill used to—and I'm holding the House Cup and the Quidditch Cup—I'm Quidditch captain, too!" And it was then that Harmony understood. Ron felt overshadowed by all his older brothers, and now, his deepest, most desperate desire was to be the best of all of them, to show the world that he was not just another Weasley. Ron looked excitedly at Harry. "Do you think this mirror shows the future?"

"How could it? All my family are dead…"

"Ahem." Harmony said, snapping the boys out of their impending argument. "I think it's fair to say that I should get a turn too?"

Harry and Ron both frowned, then nodded "Yes… yes, of course."

Harmony stepped in front of the mirror, and felt her eyes bulge and her jaw drop. "What the fuck? How…" Her eye twitched as she took in the ever-changing pictures, in multiple frames and parts upon the great screen, presented to her. "Wow…"

"What are you seeing?" Ron asked after she stood there gaping for five minutes.

"Myself making the world a better place." She said stiffly, then began telling a half-truth. "There's a lot of paperwork involved."

"Can I have another look?" Harry asked.

"You had it to yourself all last night, give me a bit more time."

"You're making the world a better place by paperwork, what's so exciting about watching yourself fill out papers? I want to see my parents." He pushed Harmony a bit.

"Don't push me!"

A sudden noise in the hallway prompted Ron to throw the cloak over all three of them, they had been talking rather loudly after all. Mr/s Norris rounded the corner, and though they stayed very still, it was a long time before she turned and left.

"This isn't safe—she might have gone for Filch, I bet she heard us. Come on." Ron pulled them out of the room.

The magically-made snow summoned for the Common Room still hadn't melted the next morning, however, Harmony deduced that it wasn't snow, but some other crystalline substance made to look and feel like snow. "Want to play chess, Harry?"

"No." Harry said sullenly.

"Why don't we go down and visit Hagrid?" Harmony suggested

"No, you go…"

"I know what you're thinking about, Harry, that mirror. Don't go back tonight." Ron warned him.

"Why not?"

"You will get obsessed with what could never be. We didn't get addicted to it right away because our desires were at least possible to achieve, yours is not." Harmony replied, still half-haunted by the giant collage she'd been smacked in the face with, just how monumental a piece of work bettering the world was. She was tempted to, the next time she saw her mother and Aunt Hannah, particularly the latter, throw herself at their feet and proclaim her own unworthiness.

"Other than that, you've had too many close shaves already. Filch, Snape, and Mrs. Norris are wandering around. So what if they can't see you? What if they walk into you? What if you knock something over?" Ron added.

"You both sound like Hermione."

"Of course I do, I sound _exactly_ like her, because we're identical twins, in case you just realized that." Harmony said sarcastically.

At the same time, Ron was serious, and said so "I'm serious, Harry, don't go."

That night, Harmony followed Harry stealthily as he left the dormitory, tracking him via a small tracker she'd clamped onto the Cloak. She waited well outside the room in a shadowed alcove of the walls, but strained her ears to listen for any noise.

She almost jumped when she heard Headmaster Dumbledore's voice "So—back again, Harry?"

Harry's voice was shaking when he replied "I—I didn't see you, sir."

"Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you. So, you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised."

"I didn't know it was called that, sir." Harry's voice was steadier now, probably as Dumbledore was smiling at him, well, that was Harmony's best guess.

"But I expect you've realized by now what it does?"

"It…well…it shows me my family…"

"It showed your friend Ron himself as Head Boy, and it showed Harmony herself making the world a better place, though she didn't specify much besides paperwork."

"How did you know—"

Dumbledore's next words were gentle "I don't need a cloak to become invisible, now, can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?"

There was silence, but judging by Dumbledore's next words, Harry had shaken his head or something like that "Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?"

Harmony frowned, did Professor Dumbledore ever take Economics? People always wanted more, be it more money, more time, more energy, more material goods, people always want and want more, hence the whole current environmental crisis that people were unwilling to fix because they're too greedy to cut back. Harry's next words were slow "It shows us what we want… whatever we want…"

"Yes and no." Dumbledore was speaking quietly "It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible. The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever _do _run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don't you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed?"

Harmony's eyes widened, if Dumbledore knew about the cloak, then either he'd seen them putting it on and pulling it off, or he'd given it to Harry in the first place. Given that Harry's parents were aligned closely with Dumbledore in the last Wizarding War, and the note the cloak came with said it was Harry's dad's, it was perfectly possible. A shuffling noise told Harmony that Harry had finally stood up. "Sir—Professor Dumbledore? Can I ask you something?"

"Obviously, you've just done so, you may ask me one more thing, however."

The next question almost made Harmony facepalm, _does he really expect an honest answer?_ "What do you see when you look in the mirror?"

"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woollen socks." There was a pause, probably Harry staring or gaping at Dumbledore "One can never have enough socks, another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books." Harmony moved out silently after that, knowing the meaningful conversation was probably at an end and not wanting to get caught by Harry.

The rest of the holidays passed quickly. Hermione, when she returned, was both horrified at Harry being out of bed three nights in a row and disappointment that they didn't find out who Flamel was. As the weeks passed, the snow was replaced by incessant rain, and one day, Harry came back from practice looking dazed and half-drowned. Hermione and Ron were playing chess with Harmony watching, so far, Hermione had won a grand total of four matches against Ron out of well over one hundred as opposed to Harmony's record of fifty-three wins out of a hundred and eighty or so. "Don't talk to me for a moment, I need to concen—" He saw Harry's face. "What's the matter with you? You look terrible."

"Snape is going to referee the next match, no idea why, but it seems really fishy to me…" Harry said quietly.

"Don't play." That was Hermione's immediate response.

"Say you're ill." Ron suggested.

"Pretend to break your leg." Hermione added.

"Pomfrey will see through that in approximately one second." Harmony noted dryly.

"_Really _break your leg." Ron amended.

"Pomfrey will FIX that in approximately one second." Harmony also amended.

"I can't, there isn't a reserve Seeker. If I back out, Gryffindor can't play at all." Harry sounded almost like he was whining.

At that moment the portrait hole opened and Neville toppled into the room, his legs stuck together with what they recognized as the Leg-Locker Curse. He must have had to bunny hop all the way from wherever he was cursed to Gryffindor Tower.

Everyone fell over laughing except for Harmony and Hermione. Harmony had whipped out her wand a moment before Hermione could and performed the counter-curse, Neville's legs sprang apart and he got to his feet, shivering.

"What happened?" Hermione asked, leading him over to sit with them.

"Malfoy, I met him outside the library. He said he'd been looking for someone to practice that on." Neville's voice was trembling.

"Go to Professor McGonagall!" Hermione told him "Report him!"

Neville shook his head "I don't want more trouble."

"You've got to stand up to him, Neville! He's used to walking all over people, but that's no reason to lie down in front of him and make it easier." Ron told him fiercely.

"There's no need to tell me I'm not brave enough to be in Gryffindor, Malfoy's already done that." Neville choked out.

Harry fished out a Chocolate Frog from one of his robes' pockets, and gave it to Neville who looked to be on the verge of tears "You're worth twelve of Malfoy, the Sorting Hat chose you for Gryffindor, didn't it? And where's Malfoy? In stinking Slytherin." Harmony decided not to reveal that she was almost chucked in Slytherin and would probably have terminated half the house before Halloween.

Neville managed a weak smile as he unwrapped the frog. "Thanks, Harry… I think I'll go to bed… D'you want the card, you collect them, don't you?"

As Neville walked away, Harry looked at the Famous Wizard Card "Dumbledore again, he was the first one I ever…" and gaped before beginning to whisper to them "I've found him! I've found Flamel! I _told_ you I'd read the name somewhere before, I read it on the train coming here, listen to this: 'Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the Dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, _and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel_'!"

Hermione jumped to her feet with an excitement Harmony hadn't seen since they'd gotten the marks back for their very first piece of homework. "Stay there!" She sprinted up the stairs to the girls' dorms. Harry and Ron barely had time to exchange a mystified look before she came dashing back down, an enormous old book in her arms. "I never thought to look in here! I got this out of the library weeks ago for a bit of light reading."

"Light?" Ron said faintly. Hermione shushed him and began flicking through the pages rapidly, muttering to herself. At last, she found what she was looking for. "I knew it! I KNEW IT!"

"Are we allowed to speak yet?" Ron was thoroughly ignored.

"Nicholas Flamel… is the _only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone_!" Hermione whispered dramatically, to just about no effect.

"The what?" Harry and Ron asked.

"Oh, _honestly, _don't you two read? Look—read that, there." She shoved the book under the noses of the other three.

_The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Philosopher's Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The Stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal. There have been many reports of the Philosopher's Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr. Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera lover. Mr. Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight)._

"See?" Hermione sounded excited "The dog must be guarding Flamel's Philosopher's Stone! I bet he asked Dumbledore to keep it safe for him, because they're friends and he knew someone was after it, that's why he wanted the Stone moved out of Gringotts!"

"A stone that makes gold and stops you from ever dying!" Harry said in wonder "No wonder Snape's after it! _Anyone _would want it."

"And no wonder we couldn't find Flamel in that _Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry,_" Ron added "He's not exactly recent if he's six hundred and sixty-five, is he?"

The next morning in Defence Against the Dark Arts, while copying down different ways of treating werewolf bites, Harry and Ron were still discussing what they'd do with a Philosopher's Stone if they had one. Harmony and Hermione, at the next desk, had already moved onto better things. Harry remembered about his upcoming match after Ron talked about buying his own Quidditch team. "I'm going to play," he told Ron and Hermione "If I don't, all the Slytherins will think I'm just too scared to face Snape. I'll show them… it'll really wipe the smiles off their faces if we win."

Harmony didn't bother to comment on the stupidity of this course of action, but Hermione did. "Just as long as we're not wiping you off the field."

That night, Harmony reported the Philosopher's Stone to her mother, having read through that chapter of Hermione's book. "The book says that though this is unconfirmed, legend had it that Flamel created the Philosopher's Stone with the help of a man named Kane and his wondrous magical capabilities."

"That's… possible, I don't think it's the same Kane that encouraged Stalin to start World War Three way back in the 50s, but who knows, maybe he's like me and your Aunt Hannah… I had thought I would start showing signs of aging now that I'm nearing age ninety, but apparently not. I won't be growing old with your father, apparently…something went seriously wrong in the family's genetics with me and Hannah, while the other sibling all still age, however slowly, we are failing to grow old… Maybe Kane is like us and was alive even back then?"

"Maybe… Mom, didn't you tell me before that any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic?"

Jane narrowed her blue eyes "Are you suggesting what I'm thinking you're suggesting?"

"If I am a great mind like you are, then we probably think alike."

* * *

After wishing Harry good luck outside the locker rooms the next afternoon, Harmony excused herself to the bathroom where she traded her pistol barrel for a longer version and fitted a scope to the Standard Scope Rail of the weapon before shoving it back in the holster, which had space to accommodate either the long barrel or a silencer fitted onto the gun. Harmony, Hermione and Ron had also been practicing the Leg-Locker Curse to use on Snape if he showed any sign of wanting to hurt Harry. "Now, don't forget, it's _Locomotor Mortis,_" Hermione whispered as Ron hid his wand up his sleeve.

"I know, don't nag." Ron snapped back.

Scanning the crowd, Harmony almost laughed in relief as she noticed Dumbledore in the crowd. Chances are whoever was trying to steal the Stone wouldn't dare to do a thing against Harry with Dumbledore around.

"I've never seen Snape look so mean." Ron commented. "Look, they're off. Ouch!"

Malfoy, who Harmony had noticed was in the row behind them with Crabbe and Goyle, finally could not resist the temptation and poked Ron in the back of the head. "Oh, sorry, Weasley, didn't see you there. Wonder how long Potter's going to stay on his broom this time? Anyone want a bet? What about you, Weasley?"

Ron remained silent as Snape had just awarded Hufflepuff a penalty. To be fair, if one of the Weasley Twins had hit a Bludger at her while she was referring, Harmony would have done the same. Hermione was focused on Harry, who was circling the game like a hawk, looking for the Snitch.

When Snape gave Hufflepuff another penalty for no reason at all, Malfoy commented loudly "You know how I think they choose people for the Gryffindor team? It's people they feel sorry for. See, there's Potter, who's got no parents, then there's the Weasleys, who've got no money—you should be on the team, Longbottom, you've got no brains."

Neville blushed bright red but turned in his seat to face Malfoy, stammering "I'm worth twelve of you, Malfoy."

The three Slytherins howled with laughter, but Ron, still focused on the game, said "You tell him, Neville."

"Longbottom, if brains were gold you'd be poorer than Weasley, and that's saying something."

Ron's teeth were gritting together loud enough to be audible by now "I'm warning you, Malfoy—one more word—"

"Ron! Harry—!" Hermion shouted suddenly.

"What? Where?" Ron spotted Harry going into a spectacular dive, drawing gasps and cheers from the crowd. Hermione stood up, her fingertips dug into her mouth in nervousness, as Harry streaked toward the ground.

"You're in luck, Weasley, Potter's obviously spotted some money on the ground!" Malfoy drawled, but before he knew what was happening Ron was on top of him wrestling him tot eh ground. Neville hesitated briefly before clamouring over the back of his seat to help.

Harmony paid more attention to the progress of the fights behind her than to Harry, but as soon as he pulled out of the dive with the Snitch in his hand and the stadium erupted, she vaulted over the back of her seat to join in the fight. Neville was still being pummelled by Crabbe and Goyle though he was almost losing consciousness, so Harmony slammed into that fight first with a long right to the back of Crabbe's head followed by a swift kick to his rear that was enough to send him sprawling. She dodged Goyle's fist aimed at her face, grabbed his arm and with a delicious crack broke his elbow backward. An uppercut followed immediately after a deflection of a haymaker attempt, and she kicked him in the crotch as he was falling back, before she lunged, grabbed his head and slammed it into the row of seats in front of them, the row she had come from earlier. Crabbe's rush at her from behind was stopped abruptly by a quick Leg-Locker Curse and he fell flat on his face before she kicked him in the head, knocking him out. She undid the curse before hauling him up and smashing his head into the row in front of them like she had with Goyle, just to make sure.

Next, she looked over at Ron and Draco, Ron's nose was bleeding and Draco had an eye that was starting to bruise. She waited for an opening, then grabbed Draco's drawn-back fist and prevented him from throwing the punch, allowing Ron to punch him again and throw him off before Harmony pounced on him. She began by breaking one of his knees with a heavy reinforced-combat-boot stomp, then, dodging or blocking his blows at her, slammed her fist into the side of his face hard enough that Draco choked a little. Finally, she punched him in the solar plexus, producing a thump as his blonde-haired head met the stone flooring under the seats, out cold. She stood up, ignoring Ron's shocked expression, and picked Neville, out cold and lyign awkwardly against the row of seats they'd come from, up "Help me get him to the Hospital Wing, will you?"

"Are they… dead?" Ron asked timidly, gesturing at Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle as he took up Neville's other side and the two began dragging him off to the Hospital Wing.

"No, I gauged my strikes so that they're just knocked out." Harmony answered, with an air of finality, and Ron didn't dare press further, it seemed the usually soft-spoken and calm Harmony Shepard had a fiery, unstable side just like her twin sister… but it was much more action-oriented whereas Hermione typically liked words more i.e. yelling. In other words, angering Harmony was much worse for one's life expectancy.

* * *

They met up with Harry over an hour later, and he'd found out something. Of course, Ron's excited yelling came first before Harry could get a word out "We won! You won! We won!" He thumped Harry on the back enthusiastically "And I gave Malfoy a black eye, and Neville tried to take on Crabbe and Goyle single-handed! He's still out cold but Madam Pomfrey says he'll be all right — talk about showing Slytherin! Everyone's waiting for you in the common room, we're having a party, Fred and George stole some cakes and stuff from the kitchens. Although, sadly, the Slytherins are going to be okay as well, even after Harmony beat them all unconscious."

"Never mind that now," said Harry breathlessly. "Let's find an empty room, you wait 'til you hear this. . . ." Apparently, according to what he told them, he had seen Snape threatening Quirrell in the forest.

"So we were right, it _is _the Philosopher's Stone, and Snape's trying to force Quirrell to help him get it. He asked if he knew how to get past Fluffy—and he said something about Quirrell's 'hocus-pocus'—I reckon there are other things guarding the stone apart from Fluffy, loads of enchantments, probably, and Quirrell would have done some anti-Dark Arts spell that Snape needs to break through—" Ron said triumphantly.

Hermione looked alarmed "So you mean the Stone's only safe as long as Quirrell stands up to Snape?"

Ron's conclusion was that "It'll be gone by next Tuesday." Harmony hated to say it, but if the boys' hypothesis was correct, Ron's conclusion would probably be correct too.

* * *

A/N: REVIEW!


	8. Dragons, Among Other Things

A/N: I am trying to imagine what Sirius Black would've done if he'd survived the war, and I'm thinking Brock from the Pokémon anime… But with the face of Boromir or whatever the guy's name is from Lord Of The Rings. That's my mental image of Black, now, though Lucius has always been Leglolas or whatever that elven archer in LOTR is called. Remus on the other hand has always looked like Faramir from LOTR to my mind. I AM NOT A LOTR FAN… but someone I know is, so I see their faces on the wall regularly.

**THIS CHAPTER INCLUDES A PREVIEW OF EVENTS (that I'm considering putting in) YEARS DOWN THE ROAD. It can be found at the end of the chapter.**

To answer Vorch's question on Harmony's personality, she is remaining on the sidelines (defending Hermione and herself excluded) while building herself up (knowledge, skills, etc.) to get the career she wants. She _was_ basically trying to have a normal, relatively inconspicuous school experience, though being friends with Harry Potter makes that a pipe dream. As for what specifically the job is, it will be fully explained in the beginning of Book 2, during the summer full of training. I'm thinking of derisively naming the counterpart to the Chamber of Secrets "Harmony Shepard and the Classified Room". Yes, I will venture away from canon, especially in structuring interpersonal relationships between the members of the Four, but it will be a bit of time before I move away significantly. At least for the first few years it'll be Harmony reacting to things, and then after WW5 starts, in her third year, she'll need to learn to take the initiative and deal with problems before they can appear.

By the way, Book 6's name has been reconsidered to be "Harmony Shepard and the Holy Grail", yes, we will explore some of the background of magical society and exactly who/what Jesus was (Kane will have his input on the matter). I hope religious readers are not too offended as I reveal the extents to which some people (Jesus) will go for various purposes.

* * *

Chapter 8: Dragons, Among Other Things

In the ensuing weeks, Quirrell appeared to be getting thinner and paler, but nothing else really changed, which did not point well to Harry and Ron's conclusion that Snape was the one behind this whole deal. Quirrell acted far too weak to be able to stand up to pressure form Snape this long, particularly given the high intensity of the pressure, according to what Harry had seen. Hermione soon went into a fit that Harmony recognized well in her sister: Hermione's usual pre-exam frenzy. She had started drawing up study schedules and color-coding all her notes. Harry and Ron wouldn't have minded, but she kept nagging them to do the same. Harmony was, by this point, immune to Hermione's nagging and just did things her own way.

"Hermione, the exams are ages away." _Honestly, Harry, you're going to get yourself killed if you do that with Hermione… she might not have the training or fitness regimen I do but that doesn't mean she's not a lot stronger than probably you and Ron combined, given our mother's genes. She could probably snap your scrawny neck like a twig right now if she really felt like it._ Harmony thought as she turned her head away so as to not witness the (possibly verbal, or perhaps not) massacre that was sure to ensue.

Hermione's nostrils flared "Ten weeks, that's not ages, that's like a second to Nicolas Flamel."

Ron reminded her of one minor fact "But we're not six hundred years old, anyway, what are you studying for, you already know it all." Harmony winced _Uh oh, Ron…_ Hermione had always liked to be zealously over-prepared… for EVERYTHING.

Hermione blew up "What am I studying for? Are you crazy? You realize we need to pass these exams to get into the second year? They're very important, I should have started studying a month ago, I don't know what's gotten into me."

The teachers were thinking along the same lines and piled homework on them for the Easter holidays. According to Harry and Ron, it was hard to relax with Hermione next to them reciting the twelve uses of dragon's blood or practicing wand movements, particularly as Harmony, when she wasn't studying, was never there. Instead of relaxing with the boys and Hermione, she was keeping her fitness up with the physical training regimen she'd planned out before school had started and stuck to throughout the year. She was also trying to type as much of the Hogwarts Library into her computer as she could.

"I'll never remember this!" Ron burst out one afternoon, the first really nice day they'd had in months. It was clear outside and the scent of oncoming summer was in the air. Harry, with his nose buried in _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_, didn't look up until he heard Ron say "Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?"

Hagrid shuffled into view, holding something behind his back and looking very visible in his mole-skin overcoat, which did not in the least blend in with the library. "Jus' lookin'" The shifty voice got their interest at once. "An' what're you lot up ter? Yer not still lookin' fer Nicolas Flamel, are yeh?" He asked suspiciously.

Ron waved him off and said rather pompously "Oh, we found out who he is ages ago,_ and _we know what that dog's guarding, it's a Philosopher's St—"

"_Shhhh_!" Hagrid silenced him, looking around quickly for listeners. "Don' go shoutin' about it, what's the matter with yeh?"

Harry acted very foolishly at this time "There are a few things we wanted to ask you, as a matter of fact," said Harry, "about what's guarding the Stone apart from Fluffy—"

Hagrid had to shut him up too "SHHHH! Listen—come an' see me later, I'm not promisin' I'll tell yeh anythin', mind, but don' go rabbitin' about it in here, students aren' s'pposed ter know. They'll think I've told yeh —"

"See you later, then," Harry said.

"What was he hiding behind his back?" Hermione wondered. "Do you think it had anything to do with the Stone?"

"I'm going to see what section he was in," Ron said, Harmony nodded at him approvingly, that was the best they could do for intelligence data at this time. She hadn't had the chance to bug the castle yet, given she'd have to wire some power and data lines without anyone noticing, which would be a tall order. She also needed to get herself additional data storage if she wanted to record even just audio feeds of the whole castle, plus video feeds of important areas.

Ron came back a minute later with a pile of books and slammed them down on the table. "Dragons!" He hissed "Hagrid was looking up stuff about dragons! Look at these: _Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland; From Egg to Inferno, A Dragon Keeper's Guide._"

"Hagrid's always wanted a dragon, he told me so the first time I ever met him," Harry supplied.

Ron frowned "But it's against our laws, Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks' Convention of 1709, everyone knows that. Its hard to stop Muggles from noticing us if we're keeping dragons in the back garden — anyway, you can't tame dragons, it's dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie's got off wild ones in Romania."

"But there aren't wild dragons in _Britain_?" Harry asked.

"Of course there are, common Welsh Green and Hebridean Blacks. The Ministry of Magic has a job hushing them up, I can tell you. Our kind have to keep putting spells on Muggles who've spotted them, to make them forget."

"What about Muggles who get killed by dragons?" Harmony asked quietly.

"Accidents, animal attacks, all sorts of excuses, or half-truths, are used to cover those up." Ron shrugged. "It's to preserve the International Statute of Secrecy."

Harmony had long had the impression that Muggles had about as much recognition and respect by wizards as horses, maybe even less. This was completely unacceptable. Either Wizard-kind would learn to respect human rights or wizarding civilization would cease to exist, it was that simple to Harmony. However, she knew that it would be Hermione who would make changes on the Wizarding side of things while she handled the Muggle side. However, first she had to change the subject before Ron picked up her thoughts on the current system of the British Magical Community, hence she said "So what on earth's Hagrid up to?" _Wait, who am I kidding? Ron's an eleven-year-old boy, he can't be that perceptive… but then again I'm an eleven-year-old girl and…_

* * *

An hour later, Harmony noted with alarm that all the curtains were closed on Hagrid's hut, and when he let them in, it was stifling hot, and a blazing fire was in the grate. What was worse though was the huge black egg sitting in the fire… It seemed to Harmony that Hagrid had finally gotten the dragon he wanted. She kept her mouth shut for now though, as it wasn't an immediate issue and if Hagrid liked dragons as much as he professed to, once he got onto the topic, he'd never shut up. He was making them tea, and offered stoat sandwiches, which they refused.

"So—yeh wanted to ask me somethin'?" Hagrid asked them once they all sat down.

"Yes, we were wondering if you could tell us what's guarding the Philosopher's Stone apart from Fluffy." Harry was displaying standard foolish male behaviour, being overly to the point and not using any tactics in his approach.

Hagrid frowned "O' course I can't. Number one, I don' know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn' tell yeh if I could. That Stone's here fer a good reason. It was almost stolen outta Gringotts — I s'ppose yeh've worked that out an' all? Beats me how yeh even know abou' Fluffy."

Hermione however did things wisely, using a warm, flattering voice "Oh, come on, Hagrid, you might not want to tell us, but you _do _know, you know everything that goes on round here." Hagrid's beard twitched and it was evident that he was smiling. "We only wondered who had _done _the guarding, really. We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you." Harmony internally raised her eyebrows, her sister was good at this…

Hagrid's chest swelled in pride at these words, and Harmony smirked knowingly at her sister while the boys beamed "Well, I don' s'pose it could hurt ter tell yeh that… let's see… he borrowed Fluffy from me… then some o' the teachers did enchantments… Professor Sprout—Professor Flitwick—Professor McGonagall—" He was ticking them off on his fingers "Professor Quirrell—an' Dumbledore himself did somethin', o' course. Hang on, I've forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Snape."

"_Snape_?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Yeah — yer not still on abou' that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped _protect _the Stone, he's not about ter steal it."

Snape might not, but Quirrell… she wasn't so sure, Harmony thought darkly. If Quirrell had been in on protecting the Stone, it must have been easy to find out how the other teachers had guarded it. He probably knew everything—except, it seemed, how to get past Fluffy and how to get Snape off his tail. However, if Snape was trying to steal the Stone, the same was true, but his main problems would be Fluffy and Quirrell's thing. It was hard to decide who was actually the guilty party…

"You're the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy, aren't you, Hagrid? And you wouldn't tell anyone, would you? Not even one of the teachers?" Harry asked anxiously.

Hagrid thumped his chest with a fist "Not a soul knows except me an' Dumbledore."

Harry sighed in relief and turned to the others "Well, that's something, Hagrid, can we have a window open? I'm boiling."

Hagrid shrugged and spread his big hands helplessly, glancing at the fire "Can't, Harry, sorry."

Harry finally realized there was something very, very wrong with the fire and said "Hagrid—what's _that_?" in a way that told Harmony he knew full well what the damned thing was but was just having a hard time believing his eyes as to just what was under the kettle. This was not wholly unexpected, however, as it was rare to see a dragon egg let alone one sitting in a fire under a kettle.

"Ah… that's, uh…" Hagrid was fiddling nervously with his beard, not quite meeting their awestruck eyes. Even Harmony had initially been amazed to see a real dragon egg… assuming Hagrid hadn't been ripped off when he'd obtained the thing.

"Where did you get it, Hagrid?" Ron was crouching next to the fire to get a better look at the egg and Harmony mentally questioned the calibrations of either his eyesight or his skin's heat receptors, given it was already so damned hot in the room. "It must've cost you a fortune."

"Won it, las' night. I was down in the village havin' a few drinks an' got into a game o' cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest."

"But what are you going to do with it when it's hatched?"

"Well, I've bin doin' some readin', got this outta the library — _Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit _— it's a bit outta date, o' course, but it's all in here. Keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on 'em, see, an' when it hatches, feed it on a bucket o' brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An' see here — how ter recognize diff 'rent eggs — what I got there's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them."

Harmony had the notion that the dragon type was probably rare because it was very, very dangerous, but she was distracted from that safety consideration by a considerably more mundane safety consideration that Hermione pointed out "Hagrid, you live in a _wooden house_." Hagrid, on the other hand, wasn't worried, he was busy stoking the fire…

So now Hermione, Ron and Harry had something else to worry about: What would happen to Hagrid if anyone found out he was hiding an illegal dragon in his hut. Harmony, on the other hand, was more concerned about the amount of firepower needed to, if necessary, kill the dragon. Sure, they'd found out that dragon skin leather was treated to amplify its protective effects, but something told her that killing Norbert with an alpha strike would be nearly impossible unless she managed to C-4 him. She found out by research that Norwegian Ridgebacks were highly venomous and their poison would be lethal within minutes at ages six months and up.

According to the description of the venom's effects, since wizards were completely inept at quantitative analysis and did things qualitatively instead, Harmony concluded it had to be a hemotoxin, instead of a neurotoxin. It caused generalized tissue damage, organ degeneration, disruption of blood clotting, and partially digested tissues at the site of injection. Loss of the afflicted limb was normal. even with prompt treatment, and nausea, disorientation and headaches could result depending on the amount of venom involved (in other words, if the victim doesn't die). The main reasons why Harmony learnt this stuff was when she was learning wilderness survival and treatment of snake and other poisonous bites, including how to avoid danger (reinforced combat boots and leggings may be involved).

Harmony had started wearing protective dragon-skin gloves whenever she was near Norbert. She really hoped none of them got bitten by the stupid critter. Unfortunately, thinking about that jinxed it.

* * *

"Wonder what it's like to have a peaceful life." Ron muttered as they struggled, or in the twins' case, glided through the extra homework the teachers had been piling on them. Hermione's study schedule habit had spilled over onto Harry and Ron i.e. she'd started making the things for them. Probably the best way to describe their opinion of these actions was that they hated it.

One morning, Hagrid sent them another note via Hedwig, with exactly two words: _It's hatching_.

Ron wanted to skip Herbology and go down to the hut, but Hermione blockaded him nearly effortlessly. Ron's grumbling reply was "Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?"

"We've got lessons, we'll get into trouble, and that's nothing to what Hagrid's going to be in when someone finds out what he's doing—" Hermione was abruptly silenced as a hand looking just like her own slammed over her mouth.

"Shut up!" Harmony hissed, narrowing her eyes at Malfoy, only a few feet away and stopped dead to listen.

"I don't like that look on his face." Harry whispered to them.

"I wonder if I could control myself enough to hit his head hard enough to only cause amnesia… I don't think he quite remembers how easily I crushed him and his cronies at the Quidditch game with only a few basic moves." Harmony mused.

Ron and Hermione's bickering continued all the way to Herbology, and in the end Hermione agreed to run down to Hagrid's with the other two during the Morning Break that first to third-years had, which bit five minutes each into the end of first and the beginning of second period. When the bell sounded at the end of the lesson, the four of them dropped their trowels at once and hurried to Hagrid's hut at the edge of the forest. The half-giant looked flushed and excited when eh greeted them with "It's nearly out!" and ushered them all inside.

The black, round egg was lying on the table, with deep cracks in it and something stirring inside. The occasional rustling and clicking noises would come form inside. Suddenly, after they'd drawn up chairs and sat to watch (Harmony stayed on her feet to maintain manoeuvrability in case the dragon went berserk), there was a scraping noise and the egg split open. The hatchling dragon flopped out onto the table, with relatively huge spiny black wings and a slim jet-black body, a long, sharp snout with wide nostrils, small stubs that would eventually be its horns, and large, bulging orange eyes. Its back had the distinct triple line of horns, now only little pads, that was characteristic of Ridgebacks and from which they drew that part of their name. It sneezed once and a few sparks flew out of its snout.

"Isn't he _beautiful_?" Hagrid murmured, reaching out to stroke the dragon's head. It snapped at his fingers, showing pointed fangs. "Bless him, look, he knows his mommy!" He seemed to have forgotten or chosen to conveniently ignore his own gender, probably not a good sign for how he'd react when they had to remove the dragon from Hogwarts one way or another.

Hermione blinked a few times at the little critter before looking up slowly and saying just as slowly "Hagrid, how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly?"

Hagrid would have answered had his eyes not gone wide and his face very pale, he jumped to his feet and rant o the window. "Someone was there watching, wasn't there?" Harmony asked, already knowing and dreading the answer. Hermione's glance flickered toward Harmony's pocket holster as usual when something big came up. She trusted her sister, but she still privately believed their parents were completely barmy for giving an eleven-year-old a gun at all, let alone a big gun (the grenade launcher in her other pocket holster).

"Yea, someone was lookin' through the gap in the curtains…it's a kid… he's runnin' back up ter the school."

Harmony bolted to the door and looked outside, immediately noting the shock of blonde hair, which was an identifier for only one asshole the quartet were too well acquainted with "Malfoy. He's seen the dragon." Ron cursed loudly, and Hermione swatted him in the back of the head for it. "We need to get rid of the dragon as soon as possible."

About a week was spent between Harmony wanting to knock Malfoy's memories out with fists (wearing combat gloves) and feet (clad in her usual combat boots of course), doing homework, and trying to reason with Hagrid in his hut. He hadn't been doing his gamekeeping duties because the dragon had kept him so busy. Chicken feathers and empty brandy bottles were all over the floor and the dragon had grown three times in length already. Smoke furled out of its mouth every once in a while as it tried to breathe fire using the ethanol it was imbibing. Harmony still had no idea how dragons could actually breathe fire, but something told her it was probably a lot more sophisticated than wizard-kind ever guessed or could understand.

"Just let him go, set him free." Harry urged, sounding suitably, well, for lack of better words, urgent.

Hagrid frowned "I can't, he's too little. He'd die." That more or less made sense as he was only a week old, still, they had to get rid of him, and ideally soon. "I've decided to call him Norbert. He really knows me now, watch. Norbert! Norbert! Where's Mommy?"

Ron was muttering something in Harry's ear that Harmony's combat-calibrated senses picked up, it sounded remarkably like (and probably was, given what she deciphered was reasonable) "He's lost his marbles."

"Hagrid, give it two weeks and Norbert's going to be as long as your house. Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment."

Hagrid sighed "I… I know I can't keep him forever, but I can't jus' dump him, can't."

Harry suddenly spun to face Ron "Charlie." Harmony frowned, trying to remember who that was but coming up with a blank though she was sure Ron had used the name at some point.

Ron rolled his eyes "You're losing it, too, I'm Ron, remember?"

"No, Charlie, your brother Charlie. In Romania. Studying dragons. We could send Norbert to him. Charlie can take care of him and then put him back in the wild!"

Ron grinned "Brilliant! How about it, Hagrid?" It took a while of talking that Harmony zoned out of, but in the end they persuaded Hagrid to see things their way and got permission to send an owl to Charlie to ask him. Harmony on the other hand was busy watching Norbert rather closely, though in a metaphorical sense, not a physical one, still contemplating the question of where dragon fire came from.

The next week went by _almost_ slower than the glacial pace of the previous week. On Wednesday night, Hermione and Harry were sitting in the common room after everyone else had gone to bed, and it was just after the wall clock chimed midnight that the portrait hole burst open. Ron yanked off Harry's Invisibility Cloak. "It bit me!" He showed them his hand, wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. He had been down at Hagrid's hut helping him feed Norbert, who had been eating a LOT of dead rats these days. Harmony had been snapped at too by the critter, but her dragon-skin gloves and later her reinforced combat boots had prevented her from being poisoned. Unfortunately, she was not there in the Common Room to tell Ron to go for help right away. "I'm not going to be able to hold a quill for a week. I tell you, that dragon's the most horrible animal I've ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you'd think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit. When it bit me he told me off for frightening it. And when I left, he was singing it a lullaby."

There was a sharp tap in the dark window and the trio turned to see a very familiar snowy owl perched outside. "It's Hedwig!" Harry exclaimed, rushing over to let her in. "She'll have

Charlie's answer!"

The note read:

_Dear Ron,_

_How are you? Thanks for the letter — I'd be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but it won't be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Trouble is, they mustn't be seen carrying an illegal dragon. Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it's still dark. Send me an answer as soon as possible._

_Love,_

_Charlie_

"We've got the Invisibility Cloak, it shouldn't be too difficult — I think the cloak's big enough to cover two of us and Norbert." The other two agreed with him, because the last weeks had been too horrible for words, anything was good to get rid of Norbert… and Malfoy.

There was only one minor hitch. Harmony noticed Ron's hand the next morning, which had swollen to twice its usual size, and confronted him about it. She practically ordered Ron to go to Madam Pomfrey immediately or "You'll have to have that hand chopped off. I can do that for you, but I don't think you'd like to live life with only one hand." By the end of the day, though he had gone to Pomfrey, Ron was in a terrible state in bed.

"It's not just my hand, though that feels like it's about to fall off." Ron groaned "Malfoy told Madam Pomfrey he wanted to borrow one of my books so he could come and have a good laugh at me. He kept threatening to tell her what really hit me, I've told her it was a dog, but I don't think she believes me. I shouldn't have hit him at the Quidditch match, that's why he's doing this."

The others tried to calm Ron down " He would have done it anyways, the asshole." Hermione glared at her sister and was about to say something when Harmony merely stuck her hand out to cover Hermione's mouth and continued talking to Ron "It'll all be over at midnight on Saturday." she told him. He sat bolt upright and began to sweat.

"Midnight on Saturday! Oh no… oh no… I've just remembered… Charlie's letter was in that book Malfoy took, he's going to know we're getting rid of Norbert."

Harmony didn't have time to punch Ron's lights out for his extremely stupid information leak and for not burning the letter before Madam Pomfrey appeared and shooed them out. She was still fuming when they returned to the common room. "What are we going to do now? Go out and maul Malfoy into the hospital wing before he can intercept us tonight?"

Harry shook his head "No. We're not like him, we don't go around beating people up like that."

Harmony made a mental note that Harry Potter had what she usually referred to as Noble Git Syndrome, something she would have to rectify in the future. "Well then we need to change the operational plan."

"It's too late to change the plan now, we haven't got time to send Charlie another owl, and this could be our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We'll have to risk it. And we have got the Invisibility Cloak, Malfoy doesn't know about that." Harry said hollowly, clearly worried by trying not to show it.

Fang the boarhound was sitting outside the hut with a bandaged tail when they went to tell Hagrid the bad news. The half-giant opened only a window to talk to them. "I won't let you in," he puffed. "Norbert's at a tricky stage, but nothin' I can't handle." When they told him about Charlie's letter, his eyes filled with tears, though that was probably because Norbert had just bitten him on the leg. "Aargh!" Harmony told him about Ridgebacks being poisonous "It's all right, he only got my boot—jus' playin'—he's only a baby, after all." The baby in question banged its tail on the wall and the windows rattled. Harry, Hermione and Harmony walked back to the castle feeling that Saturday needed to get a move on and get here already.

They would be much sorrier for Hagrid when he had to say good-bye to Norbert if they hadn't been worried about the operation. It was a very dark, cloudy night, and only Harry and Hermione went under the cloak, already running late when they reached the hut due to Peeves not leaving the entrance hall for some time. Harmony had allowed the two to do this because she would be going for Malfoy instead, to make sure he couldn't intercept them.

Hagrid had Norbert packed and ready in a large crate "He's got lots o' rats an' some brandy fer the journey, an' I've packed his teddy bear in case he gets lonely." The ripping sounds from inside the crate strongly suggested to Hermione that the teddy was having its head torn off. As Harry and Hermione covered themselves and the crate with Harry's Invisibility Cloak, Hagrid started sobbing. "Bye-bye, Norbert! Mommy will never forget you!"

It was mostly thanks to Hermione's combination of size (she was among the tallest girls of her year) and strength (she surprised herself and Harry by lifting Norbert's box mostly on her own while he, being at the front, just steered them) that they made it back to the castle and up through the school's various corridors. "Nearly there!" Harry was panting even though Hermione was only breathing somewhat deeply, and she was carrying most of the weight… She wondered if their abnormal strength had anything to do with how her parents thought Harmony trained enough to be armed for her first year at Hogwarts.

A sudden movement ahead of them made them shrink into the shadows, staring at the dark outlines of two people grappling a mere ten metres away. Hermione had been taught from birth to think in metric, but in Imperial it was about thirty-three feet away. A lamp flared, and they saw that Professor McGonagall, in a tartan bathrobe and hair net, had Malfoy by the ear. "I was alerted that you were going to sneak out at night tonight, Mr. Malfoy. Detention, and twenty points from Slytherin. Wandering around in the middle of the night, how DARE you?"

"You don't understand, Professor. Harry Potter's coming, and he's got a dragon!" Malfoy shouted back.

McGonagall huffed "What utter rubbish! How dare you tell such lies! Come on, I shall see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!"

The steep spiral staircase up to the top of the tower seemed rather easy after that. It was only after stepping out into the cool night air that they took off the cloak, glad to be able to breathe properly again, Hermione began doing a sort of jig. "Malfoy's got detention! I could sing!"

"Don't." Harry warned her. Hermione frowned, it sounded something Harmony would say. Guffawing about Malfoy, they waited, Norbert thrashing about in his crate, for the next ten minutes. About ten minutes later, four broomsticks came swooping down from the dark night. Charlie's friends seemed fairly cheerful. They showed Harry and Hermione the harness they'd rigged up to suspend Norbert between them. They helped Norbert get buckled in/down, then the two first-years shook hands with Charlie's friends and thanked them very much.

At last, Norbert was leaving… going… going… gone.

They slipped back down the spiral staircase joyfully, now that Norbert was off their hands. No more dragon, Malfoy in detention, what could spoil their happiness? The answer was at the bottom of the stairs. As they stepped into the corridor, Filch's face suddenly appeared out of the darkness.

"Well, well, well… we _are_ in trouble." Harry murmured. They had, rather stupidly, left the Invisibility Cloak on top of the tower. Harmony would probably kill them if she found out about this dumb mistake, Hermione thought gloomily as they were led off.

* * *

Well, that was the beginning of what they told Harmony in the morning, at least, when Hermione's sister, after seeing the points hourglasses, had picked Harry up one-handed in anger and slammed him against the wall to demand information on "the massive fuck-up". They had overnight lost one hundred and fifty points from Gryffindor House, the two of them and Neville Longbottom. "I reported Malfoy to McGonagall you idiot, to get him out of the way, and I was busy creating a distraction elsewhere in the school so that Filch would leave the area sooner, and what do you do? Run straight into him _without the fucking invisibility cloak_. I don't care if it's your father's or even Merlin's, but I'm telling you Potter that if you forget that cloak again you will never get it back from me." She sounded more intense and frightening than she ever had before, and vastly more intimidating than her usual indifference.

"If you don't want to go retrieve my stuff, I'm okay with that, I can get it myself…"

"No, I mean I will go retrieve it, and I will keep it, at least for a month or two until the next time we need to do something critical. Do you understand me now? If you do anything so atrociously STUPID again you WILL pay for it."

Harry shrugged "That doesn't sound so bad, you probably keep your stuff better protected than I do anyways… you sure seem able to defend yourself well enough. You can hang onto the Cloak if you'd like, at least until we have our next important thing to do."

Harmony laughed bitterly "Oh Potter, once you start seeing a girl, you will eat those words, I'm just playing with you, did you really think I wanted your stuff? What use could I possibly have for an invisibility cloak?" _Except to study it and replicate it in SI's next generation of military stealth technologies…_ "Still, even if I don't make you pay for doing dumb things, someone or something somewhere will make you pay, believe it, Harry Potter, for it is true."

* * *

Unfortunately, Hermione and Neville paid too for their tactical error, Hermione began to keep her head down in class and work quietly, which was annoying for her older twin because Harmony had to become the know-it-all to replace her and win their steady stream of points for Gryffindor, so that their House could at least still have a chance at the Cup. About a week before exams were due to start, Harry told them something new. He had overheard Quirrell apparently being threatened by someone or something "again", and the man had, by what Harry had heard, given in.

"Snape's done it, then!" Ron declared. "If Quirrell's told him how to break his Anti-Dark Force spell—"

Hermione tried to be optimistic "There's still Fluffy, though."

"Maybe Snape's found out how to get past him without asking Hagrid," Ron suggested, looking up at the thousands of books surrounding them "I bet there's a book somewhere in here telling you how to get past a giant three-headed dog. So what do we do, Harry?"

Ron was looking adventurous again, but Hermione basically cock-blocked him. "Go to Dumbledore. That's what we should have done ages ago. If we try anything ourselves we'll be thrown out for sure."

Harmony shook her head "We've got no proof. Assuming your idea" she had been about to say hypothesis but then realized Ron and Harry probably didn't know what that was "is correct, and it kind of looks like it at the moment, Quirrell's too scared to back us up. Snape's only got to say he doesn't know how the troll got in at Halloween and that he was nowhere near the third floor—who do you think they'll believe, him or us? It's not exactly a secret we hate him, Dumbledore'll think we made it up to get him sacked. Filch wouldn't help us if his life depended on it, he's too friendly with Snape, and the more students get thrown out, the better, he'll think. And don't forget, we're not supposed to know about the Stone or Fluffy. That'll take a lot of explaining."

"If we just do a bit of poking around—" Ron began.

Harry cut him off "No, we've done enough poking around." He yanked a chart of Jupiter and its moons over to him and began to learn them. Unfortunately for the fools that made up wizarding society, they could only see a few of them from Earth with their _small_ (emphasis on small) optical telescopes, no matter how magically polished and preserved the lenses were.

The next morning, Harry, Hermione and Neville received notes at the breakfast table. They were all the same:

Your detention will take place at eleven o'clock tonight.  
Meet Mr. Filch in the Entrance Hall  
Professor M. McGonagall

Harry had apparently, judging by his evident surprise, forgotten they still had detentions to do in the public outrage over the points lost, which had made him from one of the most liked and respected people in the school to the most hated literally overnight. Harmony thought that Hermione might complain that this was a whole night's studying lost, but she stayed silent. Apparently, Hermione decided she deserved what she got. Well, Hermione had better learn that when an operation was clearly above her skill level, it was best left to more experienced, more heavily armed operatives. Gathering in the Entrance Hall made it highly likely that they were heading outside and Harmony doubted it was to the greenhouses or anywhere really safe (the letter would have said so if they had been headed there), it was either something to do with the Lake or the Forbidden Forest. Fortunately, the nights were still cool, so she had good excuses for wearing bulky clothes so she could conceal a few more rounds or clips of ammunition. She pulled her sister aside "Hermione, this detention is either going to be on/in the Black Lake or in the Forbidden Forest. You need more experience and firepower." She gestured discreetly at her pockets and Hermione nodded, despite a deep frown on her face "Before you can go in either with your safety assured."

"But if Professor McGonagall assigned me the detention… she would know if there was anything dangerous involved, right?"

"Do you think she knows about everything that's in that forest right now? No, I doubt even Hagrid knows everything about everything in that forest right now. Seriously, sis, you need to stay safe, for me, please."

"Give me an argument that actually makes sense, Harmony, we're twins, we're basically the same genetically. If something happens to me, you can still carry on our genes." _This was what happened when your younger twin was even more studious than you,_ Harmony thought bitterly _They start using Darwinian arguments against you._

"Exactly, but we both know you're going to be the one who's ever going to have any children. I on the other hand am responsible therefore to make sure you are around to bring those children up. They are my kids too, you know, because we're identical twins. Biologically, it only makes sense for me to take all the risks. On a more human perspective, Hermione, I have a better chance of surviving just about anything than you do. Therefore, I should be the one taking the risks."

Hermione opened her mouth indignantly at the suggestion of her twin taking her place for a detention, froze in place in abrupt understanding, then threw her arms up in a silent gesture of irritation while hissing so that only Harmony could hear "You're never going to give up this overprotective thing, are you?"

"Not in the immediate future, might move onto better things after you get a decent bloke, but—"

"And what sort of bloke would you deem acceptable? Harmony, stop being such an overprotective bi…" she caught herself just in time "bint."

"I'm not stupid, Hermione, I know what you were about to say. To me, a decent man would be one to understand that should anything happen to you that is remotely because of him, barring maybe pregnancy and childbirth, he will be permanently separated from his testicles. That's among many other parts of his body, through the use of a microtome to get as many sections as possible. Sandpaper could work too, especially strapping him onto riding a belt sander." A microtome was an implement used to make very thin cross-sectional slices of a specimen for examination under a microscope. It, like every other tool in existence, could double as a torture implement. "The point is, Hermione, I'm not letting you go into that Forest on your own."

"You're not even certain that it IS in the Forest. I still don't think Professor McGonagall would make us go into the Forest at night…"

"Well it's a more reasonable guess than anywhere else… we're meeting in the Entrance Hall! If it was to help Sprout in the greenhouses McGonagall would have sent us straight there. If it was to help Filch clean something somewhere we would have been sent straight there too. The only possible explanation…" Harmony trailed off as to exactly who'd want help with stuff in the forest "Hagrid… he must want help with something in the Forest… but what could it be?"

"Knowing Hagrid, something he thinks is safe but is actually really dangerous—" Hermione clapped a hand over her own mouth, noticing she had just sunk her own arguments in this disagreement with her last few words.

"Exactly."

* * *

At ten to eleven that night, Harmony, wearing her usual uniform which on the outside was identical to Hermione's, said good-bye to Ron and Hermione in the common room and went down to the Entrance Hall with Harry and Neville. By the time they arrived, Filch was already there, and so was Malfoy, from Harry's sudden raise of his eyebrow, Harmony guessed that he'd probably forgotten Malfoy had gotten a detention too.

"Follow me." Filch said, lighting a lamp and leading them outside. "I bet you'll think twice about breaking a school rule again, won't you, eh?" He was leering at them in a way that made Harmony suspect he was a pedophile and thus made her want to terminate him "Oh yes… hard work and pain are the best teachers if you ask me… It's just a pity they let the old punishments die out… hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days, I've got the chains still in my office, keep 'em well oiled in case they're ever needed… Right, off we go, and don't think of running off, now, it'll be worse for you if you do." Harmony wasn't thinking about running, she was thinking about removing her pistol (lengthened barrel fitted, but as a result, not silenced, since her holster was only so long) from its holster in her pocket and drilling Filch between the eyes. The moon was bright, but the clouds in the sky would occasionally occlude it and darken the it surroundings, but Harmony was acutely aware of them approaching the trees of the Forbidden Forest and Hagrid's hut. There was a distant shout and Harmony had her wand most of the way out of her cloak pocket before registering it was Hagrid's voice.

"Is that you, Filch? Hurry up, I want ter get started."

Harry had a relieved expression which Filch noticed, as he said "I suppose you think you'll be enjoying yourself with that oaf?" Harmony was wondering if Filch would remember who happened to melee him on the back of the head the next morning, if she actually went with her impulses. Training prevented her, but a girl could dream… it wasn't quite a daydream as it was night, but whatever… "Well, think again, boy, it's into the forest you're going and I'm much mistaken if you'll all come out in one piece."

Neville let out a moan of fright and Malfoy stopped dead in his tracks. "The forest?" He sounded rather faint "We can't go in there at night—there's all sorts of things in there—werewolves, I heard."

Harmony rolled her eyes, it wasn't the full moon, but Malfoy didn't seem to have realized that. Neville, clutching onto Harry's sleeve, made a choking noise of terror. Filch smiled savagely "That's your problem, isn't it?" He said gleefully "Should've thought of them werewolves before you got in trouble, shouldn't you?"

Hagrid came marching toward them out of the dark night carrying his large crossbow with a quiver of arrows hung over his shoulder, Fang following him. Harmony raised an eyebrow, the crossbow had to be magically enhanced to really harm a magical creature, it was only logical given how much damage dragon skin, for example, could withstand.

"Abou' time, I bin waitin' fer half an hour already. All right, Harry, Hermione?" Harmony smiled at him the way her sister usually smiled instead of her own trademark vicious grin.

"I shouldn't be too friendly to them, Hagrid," Filch said coldly "they're here to be punished, after all."

"That's why yer late, is it? Bin lecturin' them, eh? 'Snot your place ter do that. Yeh've done yer bit, I'll take over from here." Hagrid was frowning down at Filch, obviously annoyed.

"I'll be back at dawn, for what's left of them." Filch said nastily. He turned and started back toward the castle, his lamp bobbing away into the dark night.

Malfoy turned toward Hagrid "I'm not going in that forest." The panic in his voice was evident.

"Yeh are if yeh want ter stay at Hogwarts. Yeh've done wrong an' now yeh've got ter pay fer it." Hagrid snapped fiercely.

"But this is servant stuff, it's not for students to do. I thought we'd be copying lines or something, if my father knew I was doing this, he'd—" Could the annoying brat do anything without referring to his father? Harmony didn't believe so… he was clearly his father's puppet.

Hagrid didn't stand for such nonsense "—tell yer that's how it is at Hogwarts. Copyin' lines! What good's that ter anyone? Yeh'll do summat useful or yeh'll get out. If yeh think yer father'd rather you were expelled, then get back off ter the castle an' pack. Go on!" Malfoy glared at Hagrid, but then backed down, dropping his gaze in a gesture of submission. "Right then, now, listen carefully, 'cause it's dangerous what we're gonna do tonight, an' I don' want no one takin' risks. Follow me over here a moment." He led them to the edge of the forest, holding his lamp high, he pointed down a arrow, winding dirt path that led into the dense forest. A light breeze was present, coming from the direction of the forest, which was good, as it would mean they were downwind from whatever they were looking for. There was something, something silver, shimmering on the ground, something that shouldn't have been there…

"Look there," Hagrid was pointing at the something Harmony had noticed "see that stuff shinin' on the ground? Silvery stuff? That's unicorn blood. There's a unicorn in there bin hurt badly by summat. This is the second time in a week. I found one dead last Wednesday. We're gonna try an' find the poor thing. We might have ter put it out of its misery."

"And what if whatever hurt the unicorn finds us first?" Mafloy's voice quavered.

"There's nothin' that lives in the forest that'll hurt yeh if yer with me or Fang, An' keep ter the path. Right, now, we're gonna split inter two parties an' follow the trail in diff 'rent directions. There's blood all over the place, it must've bin staggerin' around since last night at least." The problem was that Harmony suspected it was not something that lived in the forest, she had a feeling it was something new, an intruder…

"I want Fang," Malfoy said quickly, looking at Fang's jaws.

"All right, but I warn yeh, he's a coward" Hagrid said, "So me, Harry, an' Hermione'll go one way an' Draco, Neville, an' Fang'll go the other. Now, if any of us finds the unicorn, we'll send up green sparks, right? Get yer wands out an' practice now" They did as instructed "— that's it — an' if anyone gets in trouble, send up red sparks, an' we'll all come an' find yeh — so, be careful — let's go."

The forest was dark and quiet. A short way, about 100 or so meters, into it, they reached a fork in the path. Harry, Harmony and Hagrid took the left path while Malfoy, Neville and Fang too the right. They walked in silence, Harry's eyes were fixed on the ground and Hagrid was looking around, his expression rather worried, while occasionally looking down to keep the trail of unicorn blood. Harmony was watching her surroundings carefully, while giving the impression that she was looking down by tilting her head somewhat. She was wishing that she had been able to bring her night and thermal viewer gear without revealing her identity.

She was hearing the sound of running water before someone spoke up "_Could _a werewolf be killing the unicorns?" Harry asked with much trepidation.

"Not fast enough," Hagrid replied "It's not easy ter catch a unicorn, they're powerful magic creatures. I never knew one ter be hurt before." There were still spots of unicorn blood every once in a while along the winding path. "You all right, Hermione? Don' worry, it can't've gone far if it's this badly hurt, an' then we'll be able ter—GET BEHIND THAT TREE!"

Hagrid grabbed Harry and hoisted him off the path behind a towering oak, but Harmony had already dove for cover and rolled back upright with both her hands jammed into her pockets, drawing her weapons fluidly into position and unlocking the safeties before switching the safeties off. That was before Hagrid could grab her along with Harry, though he frowned at her for a second, knowing full well it was her now and knowing why she was here. Hagrid had loaded his crossbow, raising it, ready to fire. The three of them listened, something was slithering over dead leaves nearby. It sounded like a cloak trailing along the ground. Hagrid was squinting up the dark path, but after a few seconds the sound faded into the distance. Harmony REALLY wished she had her night/thermal viewer here, if the sound was the same volume as a cloak trailing over dead leaves and they could hear it, then it was definitely within range of her pistol and grenade launcher. Given how very few magical creatures, i.e. dragons, were highly resistant to non-psychic attack, and the fact that it was usually only those that used powerful non-psychic attacks themselves that had adequate defences against them, she could probably kill it with an alpha strike.

"I knew it, there's summat in here that shouldn' be." Hagrid murmured.

"A werewolf?" Harry asked.

"That wasn' no werewolf an' it wasn' no unicorn, neither." Hagrid stated grimly "Right, follow me, but careful, now."

They moved slower, as quiet as they could be (Harry was the worst at stalking silently through the forest), their ears straining for any sign of danger. Suddenly, just past a clearing ahead, something moved and Harmony put her hands back in her combat pants' pockets. "Who's there? Show yerself—I'm armed!" Hagrid barked, his very large crossbow raised into firing position and loaded.

Into the clearing came… a centaur. Harmony raised both her eyebrows (she remembered barely in time that Hermione's one-eyebrow-raise equalled irritation and not interest) and made herself gape at the being. To the waist, it was a man with red hair and beard, but below that was a horse's chestnut body with a long, reddish tail. "Oh, it's you, Ronan, how are yeh?" Hagrid sounded rather relieved as he lowered his crossbow and unloaded it before walking forward and shaking the centaur's hand.

"Good evening to you, Hagrid, were you going to shoot me?" Ronan had a deep, sorrowful voice.

Hagrid patted his crossbow "Can't be too careful, Ronan, there's summat bad loose in this forest. This is Harry Potter an' Hermione Granger, by the way. Students up at the school. An' this is Ronan, you two. He's a centaur."

"We'd noticed," Harmony realized barely in time that she sounded more sarcastic than what Hermione would sound like in this situation, which would be faint and nervous.

"Good evening. Students, are you? And do you learn much, up at the school?" Ronan asked them.

Harry seemed to be brain-frozen at this moment, as he said, rather unintelligently "Erm—"

Harmony tried her best to sound timid "A bit…"

"A bit. Well, that's something." Ronan said. He suddenly tossed back his head and stared at the sky with a sigh "Mars is bright tonight."

Hagrid glanced up too "Yeah, listen, I'm glad we've run inter yeh, Ronan, 'cause there's a unicorn bin hurt—you seen anythin'?"

Ronan didn't answer right away, he didn't blink either as he continued staring upward, then sighed again "Always the innocent are the first victims, so it has been for ages past, so it is now." Harmony resisted the urge to snort derisively. Fortune-telling was completely up to interpretation, really, and those who believed in it could twist just about any situation to suit their beliefs.

"Yeah, but have yeh seen anythin', Ronan? Anythin' unusual?"

"Mars is bright tonight, unusually bright."

"Yeah, but I was meanin' anythin' unusual a bit nearer home. So yeh haven't noticed anythin' strange?" Hagrid sounded a little annoyed now.

Ronan took quite some time to answer "The forest hides many secrets." _Stating the obvious much?_ Harmony thought in irritation, as she disliked people who failed to give accurate tactical reports or at least speak in clear, understandable words that did not require excess interpretation to understand.

A movement in the trees behind Ronan made Hagrid raise his bow again, but it was only a second centaur, black-haired, black-bodied and somewhat wilder in appearance than Ronan. "Hullo, Bane. All right?" Hagrid said.

"Good evening, Hagrid, I hope you are well?"

Hagrid shrugged "Well enough. Look, I've jus' bin askin' Ronan, you seen anythin' odd in here lately? There's a unicorn bin injured—would yeh know anythin' about it?"

Bane walked over to stand next to Ronan "Mars is bright tonight." He said simply.

"We've heard." Hagrid sounded rather grumpy now "Well, if either of you do see anythin', let me know, won't yeh? We'll be off, then." After they were out of the clearing, Harry finally turned his head around. After some more steps, Hagrid told them something "Never try an' get a straight answer out of a centaur. Ruddy stargazers. Not interested in anythin' closer'n the moon." Harmony had actually been surprised, given the Wizarding World was so backward they still thought muggle technologies of the 50s had just been invented, that the wizards actually figured out that the moon was the closest celestial body to the Earth.

Then again, they _were_ using Tycho Brahe's Tychonic System for the universe. Although technically this was not inaccurate with respect to relativity, it was still in essence a monument to the vast arrogance of mankind. It was therefore not as surprising that the arrogance of pureblood wizards be even greater and that the wizarding world was still stuck in the past, confident in its superiority over the non-magical world but not understanding that the Muggles now had the power to destroy all sapient life on the planet with a few presses of a few buttons.

"Are there many of _them _in here?" She asked, needing some quantitative information for a quick threat assessment.

"Oh, a fair few." That probably meant a couple hundred individuals, but Harmony was not sure… "Keep themselves to themselves mostly, but they're good enough about turnin' up if ever I want a word. They're deep, mind, centaurs… they know things… jus' don' let on much."

Harry said something very stupid at this time: "D'you think that was a centaur we heard earlier?"

Hagrid snorted "Did that sound like hooves to you? Nah, if yeh ask me, that was what's bin killin' the unicorns — never heard anythin' like it before."

They kept moving through the dense forest, though there was almost no undergrowth, understandable given the trees all had multiple layers of branches, forming several sub-canopies. The north of Scotland wasn't like the tropics where light intensity was high enough to still support ground-level growth despite one or two layers of sub-canopy under the top-level canopy of trees. Suddenly, she saw a towering fountain of red sparks through the gaps in the tree cover "Hagrid, look! Red sparks! The others are in trouble!"

"You two wait here, stay on the path, I'll come back for yeh!" It made tactical sense only because the two of them were not supposed to be able to keep up with Hagrid as he crashed away through the forest (most of the noise came from dry leaf litter crunching). The sound faded until the only thing they could hear was the rustling of leaves around them from what little wind was present. Harmony was on high alert, scanning the surrounding forest with both hands on her weapons—it could well be faster to draw, take off the safety and fire than to spin around with the weapons held out before her, due to angular momentum and all that stuff, hence why she didn't have it drawn at the moment. Though, if the threat was approaching on a vector near where she had the gun pointed at the time, it would be better to have her gun out.

"It's you, Harmony, isn't it?" Harry said quietly, watching how she was acting. It was pretty obvious given she was not terrified the way he was, but instead wary of the possibility of a threat approaching.

"It's good that you noticed. I think Hagrid has as well given my roll and draw, since I only acted like Hermione enough to fool Filch and Malfoy, I think. I need to stay on the lookout for danger, Harry, a bit quieter please?"

Harry quieted down to a whisper "You don't think they've been hurt, do you?"

"I would celebrate if Malfoy got his ass torn off, but if something's got Neville… he needed to learn when to just tell someone who you can trust to tell someone else instead of trying to do it in person, but he won't learn if he gets killed for it." When Harry looked at her questioningly she explained everything "He could have told me he heard Malfoy gloating, earlier in the evening, but it was evident that I terrified him too much, acting like a wraith all the time following you or Hermione about silently."

It took almost thirty minutes for Hagrid to return, fuming, with Malfoy, Neville and Fang. Malfoy, it seemed, had snuck up behind Neville and grabbed him as a joke. Neville had panicked and sent up the sparks. "We'll be lucky ter catch anythin' now, with the racket you two were makin'. Right, we're changin' groups—Neville, you stay with me an' Hermione, Harry, you go with Fang an' this idiot." Hagrid growled, then leaned closer to Harry to whisper something "I'm sorry, but he'll have a harder time frightenin' you, an' we've gotta get this done." That was roughly what Harmony interpreted what she picked up to be.

So Harry, Malfoy and Fang set off one way and Harmony, Neville and Hagrid went another. It was almost half an hour later that red sparks flew up from somewhere along Harry and Malfoy's general heading. "Hagrid, we need to go help them!" Harmony tried to sound like Hermione, for Neville's sake, and she believed she succeeded. They ran off in the direction of the sparks, Harmony in the lead with her pistol whipped out as she sprinted ahead, jumping over roots and ducking under branches.

Upon seeing Harry on the back of a centaur, talking to each other, about fifteen minutes into the run, she engaged the gun's safety, but not the safety lock, then holstered it before anyone could see. If Harry had a centaur protecting him, he was most likely okay, but a call couldn't hurt… much. "Harry! Harry, are you all right?" Hagrid was catching up, puffing along behind her since he wasn't so nimble in the woods at night, but that was only due to his sheer bulk.

"I'm fine," Harry sounded rather out of it. "The unicorn's dead, Hagrid, it's in that clearing back there."

Hagrid hurried off to examine the unicorn, and the platinum-blonde centaur with the palomino body let Harry slide off his back with a few words. "This is where I leave you, you are safe now." After Harry was on the ground, he added "Good luck, Harry Potter, the planets have been

read wrongly before now, even by centaurs. I hope this is one of those times." He turned and galloped into the depths of the forest.

Hagrid found Draco and Fang at his hut and took them, along with a still trembling Harry and rather tense Harmony back to the castle. When they parted ways, Harmony being the last to leave, she received a pat on the back and a silent nod of respect from Hagrid for what she did for her clumsier sister.

* * *

A/N: I promised at the beginning of the chapter there would be a brief preview of a later moment in time. This is sometime after Fourth Year by the way…

* * *

**PREVIEW:**

"Hermione, I need you to help me with training." Harmony told her twin.

Brown eyes met brown eyes of a slightly different shade, the former was warm like a pool of chocolate, and the latter cool like the sediment visible on the bottom of a fast mountain stream. "You haven't asked me for help for a very long time, older sister, you always prefer to do things on your own."

"I don't think I can do this on my own, I'll probably hate myself for putting you through this, but ever since I figured out we only have to be away from home to use magic… never mind. The point is, we're on vacation in Grenada right now, right? And besides, there is no way to trace the specific type of magic used and the specific user, if we don't have a special Trace, right?"

"Yes and yes… So?"

"I want you to help me with curse resistance. You're the only one I trust enough who actually has magic and not just blunt psychic power like Mom."

Hermione arched a delicate eyebrow "And how would I do that?"

"Put the Cruciatus Curse on me, repeatedly—"

* * *

A/N: Who thinks that's gonna go over well with Hermione? *cricket chirp*

I wonder if I should force Harmony to hack off her own right hand, perhaps to prevent the infection from spreading after getting bitten by a werewolf? Come on, the only way she could possibly let Pettigrew get away in Third Year (given she was pistol-trained by _Tanya_ of all people) is to be too preoccupied to notice he's making a run for it, due to the need to prevent Remus from tearing her throat out. It was a close thing, the bitten hand, if the viral load that had gotten to the rest of her was any larger, despite her hardened immune system, she might have been affected like Bill ended up affected. Still, walking around with a stump or a useless paddle-thing (as it regenerated) for the next year or maybe year and a half is going to be awkward… unless we can get a certain Immortal over here with his technology to heal her up.

REVIEW!


	9. Little Soldier Girl…

A/N: Harmony will get an idea of hers proven to herself in this chapter, which will result in several major alterations made to events of subsequent years regarding Ron just because though I like Harry/Hermione better, Rose/Scorpius easily trumps all else. Let's just say that Harmony will never tolerate an unworthy man even thinking of laying a finger on her sister (when Ron expresses interest, basically beats him into shape).

* * *

Chapter 9: Little Soldier Girl…

Ron and Hermione had fallen sleep in the dark common room waiting for them to come back, with Hermione leaning to her side of the couch and Ron leaning over onto her shoulder. Harmony first pushed Ron so he was leaning on his side's armrest, then frowned as he didn't wake up and shook him awake roughly. Harry had already roused Hermione, and the three of them listened with rapt attention as Harry spoke of what the centaur Firenze had told him.

It eventually got to his conclusion "…Snape wants the Stone for Voldemort… and Voldemort's waiting in the forest… and all this time we thought Snape just wanted to get rich…"

Harmony's conclusion from this entire conversation was basically. _You know what, fuck trying to get through school peacefully, it's time for a reckoning… I guess _my_ saving-the-day career is going to start a lot earlier than Mom and Aunt Hannah started _their_ careers._

"Stop saying the name!" Ron's terrified whisper sounded as if he thought Voldemort could hear them. _Then again, with all the irrationalities of magic, it's probably possible to have a spell tracking every time the name was spoken so that Voldemort's followers could hunt down those who resisted his rule._ Harmony thought. She chose to hold her tongue though, there was no need to make Ron and Hermione even more terrified of the Dark Wanker.

Harry wasn't listening to Ron at all. "Firenze saved me, but he shouldn't have done so… Bane was furious… he was talking about interfering with what the planets say is going to happen… They must show that Voldemort's coming back… Bane thinks Firenze should have let Voldemort kill me… I suppose that's written in the stars as well."

Harmony snorted internally, written in the stars… utter nonsense, it was more likely that it was the psychic reverberations of the future echoing through the continuum of the universe in some dimensional set that the universe possessed which allowed negative relative motion with regards to the fourth dimension (time) to the rest of the universe (in other words, time travel of signal). It would draw the attention of the centaurs to certain stars that they THOUGHT represented certain things. Harmony shook her head abruptly, now she was being insane as well.

"_Will you stop saying the name_!" Ron hissed like an angry goose.

Harry seemed almost delirious "So all I've got to wait for now is Snape to steal the Stone, then Voldemort will be able to come and finish me off… Well, I suppose Bane'll be happy."

Hermione looked terrified but she had a few words of comfort "Harry, everyone says Dumbledore's the only one You-Know-Who was ever afraid of. With Dumbledore around, You-Know-Who won't touch you. Anyway, who says the centaurs are right? It sounds like fortune-telling to me, and Professor McGonagall says that's a very imprecise branch of magic." It pained her to see Hermione frightened into submission like typical good little sheeple, mostly as it was her own face that stared back at her, but she couldn't stop her twin from making her own choices.

"I agree with Hermione, but remember you can interpret their predictions to make them true, easily. For example, what they said, 'always the innocent are the first victims', well Hallelujah, it's gonna be the guy too innocent to see the threat that gets hurt first. Think about it, Harry, if someone throws a curse at you and someone unaware of it walks between you, the prediction is true. If you get hit, the prediction is also true, because you were too innocent to dodge or block! If you believe in fortune-telling, it will _always come true_, I tell you!"

The sky had turned light before they stopped talking, however, it was a Saturday morning, so they could go sleep. However, later that day, Harry told the others about the Invisibility Cloak that Harmony had not found at the top of the Astronomy Tower when she snuck up to look for it. He had found it folded neatly under his sheets, with a note lying on top that read in a elegant, loopy script: _Just in case._

* * *

Exams passed rather quickly, as far as Harmony was concerned, and she figured she did fairly well too. Their last exam was History of Magic, which only lasted one hour and was stupidly easy to anyone who actually read the textbook. It would be a full week before their results would come out. When Professor Binns told them to put down their quills and roll up their parchment, Harmony was one of the few people who didn't cheer since she didn't care enough one way or the other.

"That was far easier than I thought it would be," Hermione was saying as they joined the crowds rushing out onto the sunny grounds. "I needn't have learned about the 1637 Werewolf Code of Conduct or the uprising of Elfric the Eager." She liked to go through exam papers afterward, just like in their elementary school years, Harmony noted with a small smile. It seemed coming to a magical school didn't change Hermione's tendencies, or at least what Harmony had observed of Hermione's tendencies before the older sibling was withdrawn for home-schooling after age eight.

"Can you not do that? It makes me feel a bit ill…" Ron moaned "They're finally over, don't remind me of them too much…" Hermione smirked at him in an almost Harmony-like manner before falling silent.

They wandered down to the lake and flopped down under a tree. The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan were tickling the tentacles of what looked like a Giant Squid that was basking in the shallows. Harmony frowned, what the hell was a Giant Squid doing in such a relatively small lake? What did it feed on anyways?

"No more studying," Ron sighed blissfully as he stretched luxuriously on the grass. "You could look more cheerful, Harry, we've got a week before we find out how badly we've done, there's no need to worry yet."

Harry was rubbing his forehead "I wish I knew what this _means_! My scar keeps hurting—it's happened before, but never as often as this." Hermione suggested he go to Madam Pomfrey for help, to which he replied "I'm not ill, I think it's a warning… it means danger's coming…"

"You're probably right, Harry, but Fluffy is probably still doing just fine guarding the Stone, no one knows how to get past him except Hagrid." Harmony assured him. "Besides, Dumbledore IS at Hogwarts."

Ron was too relaxed to be nervous "Harry, relax, Hermione and Harmony are right, the Stone's safe as long as Dumbledore's around. Anyway, we've never had any proof Snape found out how to get past Fluffy. He nearly had his leg ripped off once, he's not going to try it again in a hurry. And Neville will play Quidditch for England before Hagrid lets Dumbledore down."

"I don't know, I have a feeling there's something I've forgotten to do, something important."

Hermione waved him off with "That's just the exams. I woke up last night and was halfway through my Transfiguration notes before I remembered we'd done that one."

Harmony didn't think that was the cause of Harry's problem, but the alternative was… Wait, just who the hell _did_ Hagrid get Norbert's egg from? "Don't you think it's suspicious that when Hagrid really wants a dragon, a stranger appears who just happens to have a dragon egg in their pocket? How many people wander around with dragon eggs if it's against wizard law? Lucky they found Hagrid, don't you think? Why didn't I see it before?"

Harry's face was suddenly filled with realization as Harmony pointed it all out to him, he ran after her as she sprinted off toward Hagrid's hut, ignoring what Hermione and Ron were saying as they tried to keep up. Hagrid was sitting outside his house with his trousers and sleeves rolled up, shelling peas into a large bowl. He smiled at them as Harmony came to a halt before him "Hullo, finished yer exams? Got time fer a drink?"

"Yes, please." Ron started, but Harmony cut him off.

"No, we're in a hurry. Hagrid, I've got to ask you something. You know that night you won Norbert? What did the stranger you were playing cards with look like?"

Hagrid shrugged casually "Dunno, he wouldn' take his cloak off." Harry, Hermione and Ron looked stunned while Harmony nodded slowly at the good operating procedure the egg source was following. Hagrid raised his eyebrows at then "It's not that unusual, yeh get a lot o' funny folk in the Hog's Head—that's one o' the pubs down in the village. Mighta bin a dragon dealer, mightn' he? I never saw his face, he kept his hood up."

Harry sat next to the bowl of peas Hagrid was steadily adding to "What did you talk to him about, Hagrid? Did you mention Hogwarts at all?"

Hagrid kept frowning, now trying to remember "Mighta come up, Yeah… he asked what I did, an' I told him I was gamekeeper here… He asked a bit about the sorta creatures I look after… so I told him… an' I said what I'd always really wanted was a dragon… an' then… I can' remember too well, 'cause he kept buyin' me drinks…" Alarm bells were going off in Harmony's head "Let's see… yeah, then he said he had the dragon egg an' we could play cards fer it if I wanted… but he had ter be sure I could handle it, he didn' want it ter go ter any old home… So I told him, after Fluffy, a dragon would be easy…"

"And did he — did he seem interested in Fluffy?" Harry sounded as if he was trying to keep calm.

"Well — yeah — how many three-headed dogs d'yeh meet, even around Hogwarts? So I told him, Fluffy's a piece o' cake if yeh know how to calm him down, jus' play him a bit o' music an' he'll go straight off ter sleep—" Hagrid's sudden horrified look coincided with the sharp smacking sound of Harmony's facepalm. "I shouldn'ta told yeh that! Forget I said it! Hey, where're yeh goin'?"

The four of them didn't speak until they stopped in the Entrance Hall, which seemed quite cold and dark after the warm sunlit grounds, at least to the three of them who actually cared. "We've got to go to Dumbledore, Hagrid told that stranger how to get past Fluffy, and it was either Snape or Voldemort under that cloak — it must've been easy, once he'd got Hagrid drunk. I just hope Dumbledore believes us. Firenze might back us up if Bane doesn't stop him. Where's Dumbledore's office?"

"Follow me." Harmony barked at the other three as she ran off toward the entrance to Dumbledore's office. Even if they failed to guess the password, she could always go upstairs and fetch more C-4 from her trunk to blast the door open. Of course, setting off a mere grenade would probably be enough to draw the attention of anyone inside, right? So there was no need to waste her limited stocks of C-4 (she had started the year with only 20 kilograms in half-kilo blocks and 30 detonators stowed in her magical trunk as she hadn't expected to need to do much demolitions work) right?

That belief was vindicated sooner than expected as they almost ran into Professor McGonagall, carrying a large stack of books. She raise an eyebrow at them "What are you three doing inside?"

"We need to see Professor Dumbledore." Harmony stated immediately.

"See Professor Dumbledore?" Professor McGonagall's tone suggested this was in her opinion a very fishy thing to want to do "Why?"

"It's sort of secret." Harry said before Harmony could hammer things straight to the point. She glared at him in anger while Professor McGonagall's nostrils flared.

"Professor Dumbledore left ten minutes ago, he received an urgent owl from the Ministry of Magic and flew off for London at once."

"He's gone? Now?" Harmony couldn't keep the frustration out of her voice, and she silently chastised herself for that.

"Professor Dumbledore is a very great wizard, Miss Shepard, he has many demands on his time—"

"But this is important!" Harry exclaimed.

McGonagall's eyebrows rose higher "Something you have to say is more important than the Ministry of Magic, Potter?"

Harmony decided to hammer things to the point before anyone could hash it up further "Look, Professor, it's about the Philosopher's Stone."

Whatever the Professor had been expecting, that wasn't it. The mountain of books she was carrying toppled as she nearly tripped over her own feet in surprise, the volumes clattered to the ground and she didn't pick them up, instead opting to look at them with an expression of extreme shock. "How do you know—?"

"Professor, I think—" Harry started, but Harmony interrupted

"We _know_, Harry, we KNOW."

He continued with a nod "—that Sn— that someone's going to try and steal the Stone. I've got to talk to Professor Dumbledore."

Professor McGonagall looked rather suspicious of them "Professor Dumbledore will be back tomorrow, I don't know how you found out about the Stone, but rest assured, no one can possibly steal it, it's too well protected."

"But Professor —" Ron whined.

Professor McGonagall was now busy gathering up the fallen books, still looking distinctly ruffled "Potter, Weasley, Granger, Shepard, I know what I'm talking about, I suggest you all go back outside and enjoy the sunshine."

And of course they did not bother listening, dragged by Harry and Harmony toward Gryffindor Tower (which would seem more legitimate than the forbidden corridor). "It's tonight," Harry started once they were sure she was out of earshot (in other words, once Harmony unclenched her raised fist that signalled shutting up, and nodded at him to start talking) "Snape's going through the trapdoor tonight. He's found out everything he needs, and now he's got Dumbledore out of the way. He sent that note, I bet the Ministry of Magic will get a real shock when Dumbledore turns—"

"Shut up." Harmony had just, turning her head and out of her peripheral vision, seen Snape coming up behind them.

"Good afternoon." His soft, greasy voice enunciated. Harmony was tempted to put him in the Hospital Wing until Dumbledore got back, just in case. However, that probably would do more harm than good. Snape had a rather odd, twisted smirk "You shouldn't be inside on a day like this." He told them.

"We were…" Harry trailed off in a way that suggested he had no idea whatsoever what he was planning to say next.

"You want to be more careful, hanging around like this, people will think you're up to something. And Gryffindor really can't afford to lose any more points, can it?" Harry flushed pink and turned to lead them outside, but Snape called them back and told them "Be warned, Potter—any more night-time wanderings and I will personally make sure you are expelled. Good day to you." He swept off in the direction of the staff room.

Out on the stone steps, Harry turned to the others "Right, here's what we've got to do. One of us has got to keep an eye on Snape, wait outside the staffroom and follow him if he leaves it. Hermione, you'd better do that."

"Why me?" Her twin looked rather perplexed, in Harmony's humble opinion.

"It's obvious. You can pretend to be waiting for Professor Flitwick, you know." Ron shifted to a high falsetto before continuing "Oh Professor Flitwick, I'm so worried, I think I got question fourteen _b_ wrong…"

Hermione blushed in irritation "Oh, shut up." She waited a moment before continuing with "Well, I'll do that." She shot Harmony a look that said _We'll talk later_. It prevented her older twin from commenting about her blush, at least. It also prevented Harmony from telling her impolitely that she was taking a cannon fodder job. If Snape was after the Stone for Voldemort, he would have no problem with killing her to get her out of his way. However, Harmony believed Quirrell was guilty since Snape was too obvious and had been this way for too long. Supposedly Quirrell had once been a fun-loving Muggle Studies professor, and had come back from his trip changed. That sounded suspiciously like mind-control to Harmony…

"And we'd better stay outside the third-floor corridor." Harry said, gesturing at himself, Ron and Harmony "Come on."

That part of the plan fell flat on its face. As soon as they reached the door separating Fluffy from the rest of the school, Professor McGonagall turned up again and this time she got angry. "I suppose you think you're harder to get past than a pack of enchantments! Enough of this nonsense! If I hear you've come anywhere near here again, I'll take another fifty points from Gryffindor!" Ron gaped incredulously at her for this "Yes, Weasley, from my own House!"

Harry, Ron and Harmony went back to the Common Room, the girl thinking that she was probably harder to get past than a pack of enchantments if the opponent was not expecting the use of guns. Just after Harry jinxed it (as McGonagall had jinxed the theft of the Stone earlier) with the words "At least Hermione's on Snape's tail", Hermione came in through the portrait hole.

"I'm sorry, Harry!" Hermione sounded distraught, so Harmony wrapped an arm around her sister's shoulders as she sat down. "Snape came out and asked me what I was doing, so I said I was waiting for Flitwick, and Snape went to get him, and I've only just got away, I don't know where Snape went."

"Well, that's it then, isn't it?" Harry said quietly, looking pale and with glittering visible in his bright green eyes "I'm going out of here tonight and I'm going to try and get to the Stone first."

"You're mad!" Ron said.

"You can't!" Hermione said, Harmony withdrew her arm from around her twin and stared at her as if she didn't know her. "After what McGonagall and Snape have said? You'll be expelled!"

"SO WHAT?" Harry and Harmony looked at each other with raised eyebrows as they had erupted at the same time with the same words.

Harmony recovered first and rounded on Ron and Hermione, who leaned back somewhat from the outrage rolling off her in waves as she hissed furiously at them "Don't you understand? If the thief gets hold of the Stone, the Dark Wanker could be coming back! Haven't you heard what it was like when he was trying to take over? There won't be any Hogwarts to get expelled from! He'll flatten it, or turn it into a school for the Dark Arts! Losing points doesn't matter anymore, can't you see? D'you think he'll leave you and your families alone if Gryffindor wins the House Cup?" Privately, Harmony thought that her mother could probably resolve the whole problem with a push of a button if truly need be.

Harry continued from where she stopped, this time shouting as no one else was in the Common Room. "If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I'll have to go back to the Dursleys and wait for Voldemort to find me there, its only dying a bit later than I would have, because I'm never going over to the Dark Side! I'm going through that trapdoor tonight and nothing you two say is going to stop me! Voldemort killed my parents, remember?" Bright green eyes met cold brown for a moment before they reached an unspoken agreement and together glared at the other two people present.

"You're right, Harry." Hermione was speaking in a rather small voice.

"We'll use the Invisibility Cloak." Harry told them "We're just lucky I got it back."

"But will it cover all four of us?"

Harry gaped "All… all four of us?"

Ron scoffed "Oh, come off it, you don't think we'd let you go alone?"

"Of course not" Hermione agreed "How do you think you'd get to the Stone without us? I'd better go and look through my books, there might be something useful."

"I'll go arm myself and get some protective equipment for all of you."

"But if we get caught, you three will be expelled, too."

"Not if I can help it, Flitwick told me in secret that I got a hundred and twelve percent on his exam. They're not throwing me out after that." Hermione said, Harmony raised her eyebrows, wearing a bemused expression that translated to, when summed up in a single word, _"Dafuq?"_

"I will meet you at the door to the third floor corridor. I will arrive there at about eleven o'clock. Don't keep me waiting." She told the boys before she went up the stairs to the girls' dormitories.

* * *

After dinner, the three less weaponized members of the quartet stayed in the Common Room, sitting nervously apart. No one bothered them, since none of the Gryffindors had anything to say to Harry and Hermione anymore. This was the first night when they were not bothered by it. Hermione was going through her notes, hoping to come across one of the enchantments they were about to try to break. Harry and Ron didn't talk much, both thinking about the madness they were about to attempt. Harmony was nowhere to be found, she had headed out after dinner and not been seen since, probably hiding somewhere. Slowly, the room emptied as people went to bed.

"Better get the cloak." Ron muttered as the last person they could see, Lee Jordan, left. Harry ran up tot heir dorm, grabbed the cloak and the flute Hagrid had given him for Christmas, and came back to the common room where Ron and Hermione were waiting anxiously.

"We'd better put the cloak on here, and make sure it covers all three of us. If Filch spots one of our feet wandering along on its own…"

"What are you doing?" Someone said in a corner of the room. Neville appeared from behind an armchair, clutching Trevor the toad, who looked as if he'd been making another run for it.

"Nothing, Neville, nothing." Harry scrambled to hide the cloak behind his back.

"You're going out again." Neville stated blankly, staring at the three guilty faces before him.

Hermione shook her head furiously "No, no, no, no, we're not. Why don't you go to bed, Neville?"

Harry looked at the grandfather clock by the door, they couldn't waste any more time, Harmony was hopefully already waiting for them at the door of the room.

"You can't go out!" Neville told them. "You'll be caught again. Gryffindor will be in even more trouble."

"You don't understand, this is important." Harry said.

"I won't let you do it, I'll… I'll fight you!" Neville scurried over to stand in front of the Portrait Hole and faced them, gulping in fear but holding his ground.

"_Neville_, get away from that hole and don't be an idiot!" Ron yelled.

"Don't you call me an idiot! I don't think you should be breaking any more rules! And you were the one who told me to stand up to people!" He glared accusingly at Ron.

"Yes, but not to _us_, Neville, you don't know what you're doing." Ron took a step forward and Neville put his fists up, he had dropped Trevor, who fled somewhere almost immediately, in the process.

"Go on then, try and hit me! I'm ready!"

Whereas Harmony would have used her rudimentary skills of talking people into stuff, or, alternatively, falcon-punched Neville's lights out, Hermione used more magical means. "Neville, I'm really, really sorry about this." Her wand snapped up and she shouted "_Petrificus Totalus_!" Neville's arms and legs were snapped toward the centerline of his body, and his whole body went rigid as partial paralysis set in due to the psychic pulse he had just been whacked with. He swayed where he stood and fell flat on his face. Fortunately the paralyzing containment field covering him and preventing his body from moving protected his nose from breaking, but even then, when Hermione turned him over with almost no effort using only one hand, he was looking at them with eyes filled with horror. Harry and Ron raised eyebrows at this show of strength, though they were starting to get used to the twins doing things with force, speed, and dexterity that no eleven-year-olds should be able to manage, not to mention the fact that they were both quite tall for their age, standing now (in June) at almost 160cm (5 feet 3 inches), having grown throughout the year.

"What've you done to him?" Harry asked, noting how Hermione in "business mode" towered over him just like her sister usually did, like an ominous thundercloud…

Then he practically saw her deflate and go back to being Hermione again, sounding rather miserable "It's the full Body-Bind. Oh, Neville, I'm so sorry."

"We had to, Neville, no time to explain." Harry said.

"You'll understand later, Neville." Ron told him as they stepped over him and put the Invisibility Cloak over themselves.

* * *

A/N: Harmony is about to act in a way that makes the concept of the Geth Hopper make a hell of a lot of sense.

* * *

"So, Peeves, how was it?" Harmony said conversationally. The poltergeist had been so impressed by her relatively-recently hard-learnt ability (she must have fallen at least two hundred times while practicing over her first year at Hogwarts) to cling to the ceiling face-down, almost like a spider, that he hadn't ratted her out. Slight psychic propulsion capability, mostly in the field of anti-gravity, plus a liberally applied Hover Charm, made the task a lot less impressive than stories she'd heard about ninjas, as it took just about no effort to hang onto the ceiling, with only her hands and toes wedged in the nooks she'd found. The sad thing was that the only way she could attack anything was by dropping off the ceiling. It would have been much more convenient if she had been born equipped with, say, a weapons-grade eye laser.

Peeves sounded a bit panicked "The Bloody Baron has something to do here tonight… I will see you another day, fellow trouble-maker!" Peeves winked at her and sped off. She'd barely convinced him that she was just hanging here to play a prank on whoever came to check on the opened door, since she was sure there was an alarm charm on it.

As for how she persuaded him, it had roughly gone as follows: "If I wanted to get into that forbidden corridor, and the door was already open, why the hell would I be clinging to the ceiling? No, I opened the door a bit and left it there so that I could prank whoever came to check it, I'll get a photo of his face if it's Filch, to show you later, he'd probably die of a heart attack from sheer shock." Peeves had told her she was a lunatic… and then smiled exceedingly widely, leaving her be since he'd never seen anyone else hang from the ceiling like this.

A few seconds later she heard the quiet shuffling of three untrained first-years trying to be stealthy approaching the door, which was already opened halfway. "Well, there you are, Snape's already got past Fluffy." Harry's voice said quietly beneath her. There was a pause before "If you want to go back, I won't blame you, you can take the cloak, I won't need it now."

Ron snorted audibly "Don't be stupid."

"We're coming." Hermione said bossily and they moved toward the door before she spoke again. "Where's Harmony?"

As there was now enough space under her, Harmony cancelled the Hover Charm, but re-applied it when she was halfway down the three-meter drop to the floor. Unfortunately, her mother hadn't gotten around the defensive aspects of psychic training, for example, impact dampening for a larger mass, such as herself. She'd only learnt a little bit of dampening recoil of her weapons, not even having started on learning to enhance the reaction rates of nearby allies, both classed as "Support"-type psychic abilities. Energy manipulation like Yuri's Initiates back in the Psychic Dominator Disaster could do was completely out of the question for her for the near future too.

She landed with a soft thud and rolled before springing to her feet. "I'm right here, guys."

"Where were you hiding?" Hermione's voice asked.

Harmony shrugged "Trade secrets," she said "Now let's go in, anyone bring an instrument they know how to play or will I have to sing?"

"I brought a flute, but I don't know how to play any songs…" Harry said slowly.

"That probably won't work, Fluffy is probably selective enough he wants a real song before he goes to sleep." Harmony said simply "Alright, I'll sing for it."

As the door creaked open under their pushing hands, Fluffy growled, all three of his noses sniffing madly in their direction, though he couldn't see them. "Soon as you're born they make you feel small…" Harmony began, still outside the room (so that Fluffy would not attack) wishing she had a guitar to go with _Working Class Hero_.

"What's that at its feet?" Hermione whispered to the other two under the cloak as Fluffy's eyes began to droop.

"Looks like a harp, Snape must have left it there." Ron replied.

"It must wake up the moment you stop playing or singing." Harry said.

Slowly, as the dog's growls ceased, it tottered on its paws and fell to its knees, finally slumping to the ground asleep. Harmony came in through the door after that, having shifted over to the song _Masters of War_ when she finished _Working Class Hero_. "Keep singing." Ron warned her as the three non-singers slipped out of the cloak and crept toward the trapdoor. They could feel the dog's hot, smelly breath as they approached the giant heads. "I think we'll be able to pull the door open, want to go first, Hermione?" Ron turned toward her.

"No, I don't!" Hermione was bristling as Ron had even bothered asking her this.

"Alright…" Ron stepped carefully over the dog's legs, bending and pulling the ring of the Trapdoor, thus opening it. Harmony began levitating Fluffy to the other side of the room carefully, no longer quite paying attention to the Trio.

"What can you see?" Hermione asked anxiously from next to her sister.

"Nothing—just black—there's no way of climbing down, we'll just have to drop."

"I'll go first." Harry said abruptly. Harmony frowned, it was Noble Git Syndrome again, and she waved at them absently to try to get their attention as she concentrated on keeping Fluffy moving, hovering a very large dog being by no means an easy task, but they didn't seem to notice her.

"You want to go first? Are you sure? I don't know how deep this thing goes."

Harry climbed into the hole until he was hanging on by his fingertips "If anything happens to me, don't follow. Go straight to the Owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, all right?" This was when Harmony turned back around and saw him being more retarded than she thought possible, but she couldn't call out as she was still singing.

"Alright." Ron told him. Harmony waved her hand in a 'no' gesture as she pulled a large flashlight out of her belt , but Harry seemed to interpret this as a go-ahead/see-you-later and didn't see the flashlight as that side of her was being blocked by Ron's body.

"See you in a minute, I hope." He said and let go. Harmony cursed under her breath, then resumed singing and glared daggers at Ron.

"It's okay! It's a soft landing, you can jump!" Harry called from below. Ron followed right away since Harmony was beginning to unnerve him with how she was glaring. He landed next to Harry.

"What's this stuff?"

"Dunno, some sort of plant thing. I suppose it's here to break the fall. Come on, Hermione, Harmony!"

Harmony's high-powered flashlight nearly blinded the two boys as she pointed it down and Hermione looked before jumping. "We must be miles under the school." Ron said conversationally. Hermione thought it more likely the boys were somewhere around the lowest dungeons' level, since they didn't fall far enough to completely squish whatever plant they landed on. "Lucky this plant thing's here, really."

The plant seemed to start moving in the light cast on it by the flashlight and Hermione shrieked, yanking herself free of the tendrils of the plant and shouting at Ron and Harry. "Lucky? Look at you both!" Both idiots had been bound tightly in long creepers without their noticing. The tendrils had probably begun wrapping them as soon as they fell on the plant.

"What the hell is that thing doing?" Harmony barked from above before resuming making music as Fluffy grunted and snorted in his sleep. The light alone wasn't enough to stop it, apparently. The more the boys struggled, the tighter they were bound.

"Stop moving! I know what this is—it's Devil's Snare!" Hermione exclaimed.

"Oh, I'm so glad we know what it's called, that's a great help." Ron snarled, trying to stop the plant from strangling him.

"Shut up, I'm trying to remember how to kill it!" Hermione said, sounding rather agitated.

"Well, hurry up, I can't breathe!" That was Harry…

"Devil's Snare, Devil's Snare…what did Professor Sprout say? It likes the dark and the damp…"

"So light a fire!" Harry choked out.

"Yes—of course—but there's no wood!" Hermione was wringing her hands helplessly.

"USE YOUR MAGIC!" Harmony roared from far above them. Fluffy roared too as he was roused "Oh shit…" Hermione cringed as she whipped out her wand and shot her usual bluebell flames at the plant. In seconds, the boys were free as the plant, wriggling and flailing, retreated from the heat. Right about then, there was a sudden flash above them, lighting up even their chamber slightly despite the distance and a thunderous roar of sound, followed by pained howls from Fluffy. Harmony landed with a flop on top of the retreating tendrils using a Hover Charm to protect herself and crawled free as Hermione kept the plant at bay.

"Lucky you pay attention in Herbology, Hermione." Harry said, taking deep, relieved breaths.

"Yeah, and lucky Harmony doesn't lose her head in a crisis. 'There's no wood.', _honestly_…"

"Harmony, are you okay?" A groan answered them and Harmony tried to stand but fell back on her hands and knees again. Hermione helped her sister up, since she was a bit too heavy for either Harry or Ron alone.

She took several deep, shuddering breaths, looking at them as they repeated the question, before shouting "WHAT? IF YOU'RE ASKING HOW I'M DOING," Lip-reading was a bit vague in the relative dark, so Harmony couldn't quite tell "I'LL LIVE. MY EARS AREN'T WORKING TOO WELL RIGHT NOW THOUGH." It was lucky all three pairs of Fluffy's eyes had focused in the same direction when the flash-bang she'd rolled across the floor to it went off. However, even using high-efficiency earplugs inserted just before yelling down at Hermione, she'd still been half-deafened and felt sick at the sound blast she'd taken. She'd closed her eyes and turned the other way, so she wasn't blinded, at least…

"Okay, please stop yelling."

"PUT THESE ON." She dumped four helmets out of the sack she'd brought with her from where she'd stashed it outside the third-floor corridor. Inside each, she'd shoved sets of flak jackets, arm and leg pads, Harmony was already wearing her body armour under her cloak, so her helmet had nothing shoved in it, but it was obviously bulkier than the other ones. The gear was a bit big for the kids, but "IT'LL HELP KEEP YOU ALIVE."

It took several minutes before the other three were properly fitted, and Harmony's hearing more or less returned enough to only speak loudly instead of yell. "That way." She pointed down the only way forward, a stone passageway which sloped downward, then she started dragging herself along the wall toward it, stumbling and swaying.

"Can you hear something?" Ron said suddenly, breaking the awkward silence had been due to none of them daring to question Harmony's health status. Harmony couldn't hear much at the moment, so even as she strained her ears, she got nothing but some of their voices and a lot of tinnitus.

"Do you think it's a ghost?" Hermione asked.

"I don't know… sounds like wings to me." Harry said. "There's light ahead — I can see something moving."

The end of the passageway opened into a high, brilliantly lit chamber, with thousands of bright winged things fluttering and tumbling all around it. On the other side of the chamber was a large, heavy-looking wooden door "Do you think they'll attack us if we cross the room?" Ron asked.

"Probably, They don't look very vicious, but I suppose if they all swooped down at once… well, there's no other choice… I'll run." He took a deep breath and sprinted across the room, Hermione and Ron following soon after.

They had just reached the door when Harmony realized something was off about the flying objects "They're winged keys! That means we have to catch the key to the door!" She shouted at them, levelling her arm at the four broomsticks resting against the wall next to the entry door in an alcove as she slumped against the wall and slid down to take a break. "Here be broomsticks, now, good luck, you three, I feel a bit too sick to fly. If you get tired of it or give up, I _might_ be able to shoot the key out of the air if you leave it alone for a while and it starts flying in straight lines." She held out her wand, though she had no intention of trying for AA fire with spells that flew only about 50 meters or less a second. However, most of her discomfort was gone now, so she could probably shoot the key with her pistol… if it came relatively close.

"How would you know the right key?" Hermione asked curiously "There are hundreds of them."

Ron looked at the lock on the door "We're looking for a big, old-fashioned one, probably silver, like the handle."

"What Ron said, I'll just take off one of its wings so it can't fly anymore." Harmony knew however that it would be much more convenient not to use her pistol because Ron wouldn't be able to understand it. More importantly, the boy would not be able to keep the power and ease of use of muggle technology secret from the magical world. Wizards were just stupid enough that they couldn't be trusted with high levels of technology, since they were more than likely to nuke the world because they didn't understand the consequences and/or had too many deranged power freaks that could actually get somewhere in their archaic societal system. That had to change, and Harmony fully expected herself or her sister to be the ones to lead the Revolution that was drawing ever nearer.

The three of them seized brooms and kicked off into the air. It took only a few moments for Harry to spot the large, silver key that Harmony had noticed and was tracking with her eyes, due to having one bent and ruffled blue wing. He pointed it out to the others and Ron nearly crashed into the ceiling trying to catch it. Hermione and Ron closed in on it in their next attempt with Harry, who managed to pin the key to the wall and capture it. Ron and Hermione cheered as Harmony continued walking slowly over to the doorway. "Good job, Harry, I'm feeling better now, by the way." She headed him off before he could ask. Noble Git Syndrome patients tended to ask after others too often for her liking.

Harry turned to Ron and Hermione instead "Ready?" They nodded and he pulled the door open to total darkness, which lit up brightly to reveal a giant chess board. They were standing behind the black chessmen, all taller than them and carved from what seemed to be black stone. The white pieces across the chamber, unlike the black ones, had no faces, but had another door behind them.

"Now what do we do?" Harry whispered.

"It's obvious, isn't it? We've got to play our way across the room." Ron said quietly.

"How?" Hermione asked nervously.

"I think, we're going to have to be chessmen." Ron said. He walked up to a black knight and put his hand out to touch the knight's horse. At once, the stone sprang to life, the horse pawed at the ground and the knight turned his helmeted head to look down at Ron. "Do we, er, have to join you to get across?" The knight nodded and Ron turned to the other three. "This needs thinking about… I suppose we've got to take the place of three of the black pieces." At last, Ron said "Now, don't be offended or anything, but neither of you two are that good at chess, Harmony, you're good though…"

"You still win most of our matches, tell us what to do." Harmony ordered the redhead.

"We're not offended either, go on, Ron, take charge." Harry prompted

Ron nodded "Well, Harry, you take the place of that bishop, Hermione, you go there instead of that castle…"

"What about you?" Harmony asked Ron before answering her own question. "You should go take the place of the king, the main strategist has to be the most protected piece, otherwise if you're taken out our entire strategy will fall apart."

"I…" Ron backed down when Harmony swelled dangerously and stepped closer, glaring down at him (he hadn't hit his growth spurt yet so she was still a bit taller and seemed even more so with threat rolling off her in waves). "Alright then, what about you?"

"I'm going to be a knight." The chessmen seemed to be listening, because at these words, half the rear-echelon pieces of the black side walked off the board, leaving four empty spaces that the four of them took up.

"White always plays first in chess. Yes… look!" A white pawn had just advanced two steps.

Ron began directing the black pieces. They moved silently wherever he sent them. Harmony noticed Harry's knees were trembling, probably thinking about what might happen if they lost. She'd probably C-4 their way across the board if need be. Harmony sincerely hoped that the chess intelligence on the other side did not take into account every single possibility of play throughout the game, or they would lose no matter what.

Fortunately, the AI wasn't too great. The first shock for the other three first-years was when their other knight was taken by the white queen, who smashed him to the ground and dragged him off the board, where he laid quite still, face down. Twice, Ron noticed just in time that Harry or Hermione were in danger, Harmony was sent darting around the board taking almost as many white pieces as they lost black ones. Knights had, after all, always been her favourite pieces (she'd also found they were Ron's favourites as they were so damned effective). "We're nearly there… let me think…"

"Sorry, Ron, don't think so much. Harry, after I move, you will be free to checkmate the king." Harmony said, adjusting the fittings of her body armour and helmet a bit, checking her shoulder pads again for good protection.

"NO!" Harry and Hermione shouted at her.

"There's a reason chess is considered a war simulation, Ron, in war, you need to give up some assets to achieve victory. Everyone except _maybe_ the Supreme Commander is expendable, _everyone_. You tell them, Ron." She glared at the boy, who hesitated for a moment, looking at her, until he finally met her hard, determined glare and nodded, his eyes changing from a half-lost look to an understanding one.

"She's right, it's the only way…"

Harmony smirked before she moved, before Harry and Hermione could protest anymore, thinking how it was so obvious the redheaded kid was crushing on her sister. She'd suspected it as soon as Ron began being mean to Hermione, and it was even more obvious as she only needed to make him understand she was decisively NOT her identical twin before he was okay with her heading into danger. The white queen pounced and slammed Harmony's head with her stone arm, the bulky helmet emitting a slight crunching noise that made Hermione scream, but she stayed on her square as the white queen dragged her twin off the board, Harmony completely limp and unmoving.

Harry moved three spaces left and forward, shaking. The white king took his crown off and threw it at Harry's feet, then the white pieces parted to make a path through them to the door on the other door. There was a groan and a couple popping noises as Harmony picked herself up and rolled her shoulders from where she was chucked by the white queen. Then there was a louder groan, followed by angry sobs, as she had been tackled (she was still somewhat sore, too sore in her opinion for a tackling) by Hermione, who was very angry at her sister for certain obvious reasons. It took until Harmony slapped her sister for Hermione to stop blabbering "Wake up, Hermione, we need to get the mission done, you can scream all you want at me after!" The older twin bellowed before she stormed past them and shoved the next door open.

A memorable smell filled their nostrils and Harmony regretted not bringing gas masks. Still, she took two bars of C-4, put them together, and stuck a detonator into one of them before shoving it in the troll's mouth and waving them all back. She managed to blow the troll's head off, like she had with the last one at Halloween, only because most magical creatures' natural defences worked best against psychic energy pulses i.e. magic, and not physical blasting, at least, not from _within_ their exoskeletons/hides (troll skin was so thick and durable it might as well be carapace).

"I'm glad we didn't have to fight that one… come on, I can't breathe." Harry complained, all three of the non-trained people in the room were holding their cloaks up to their noses and breathing through them. Given Harmony had been forced to crawl along sewers for days during basic urban combat training and swamps for about two weeks once… she was merely (highly) irritated by the smell, not quite stifled. The next room only had a table with seven bottles on it, all of different shapes and sizes, plus a parchment. Hermione picked it up and began reading. As she did, black flames erupted before them and purple flames behind them.

_Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,  
Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,  
One among us seven will let you move ahead,  
Another will transport the drinker back instead,  
Two among our number hold only nettle wine,  
Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.  
Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,  
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:  
First, however slyly the poison tries to hide  
You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;  
Second, different are those who stand at either end,  
But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;  
Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,  
Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;  
Fourth, the second left and the second on the right  
Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight._

"Whoever came through before us should have burnt the parchment, it's stupid to leave clues for your enemy." Harmony observed "However, given the way the rhyme works, I doubt any attempt at misguidance could be so well thought out within the time the intruder likely had, and the amount of patience too. We can only conclude the culprit did not expect anyone to come after him, since he couldn't have made this thing up on the spot, and Snape isn't so incompetent as to let his clues be destroyed easily. It's also possible that the paper regenerated itself automatically after being destroyed… Hermione, you and I should both work on this problem separately."

"Yes." Hermione nodded, then turned to the other two and explained "This isn't magic, it's logic, a puzzle. A lot of the greatest witches and wizards haven't got an ounce of logic. They'd be stuck in here forever."

"But so will we, won't we?" Harry said.

"You forget who you're talking to." Harmony reminded him sharply.

Hermione nodded "Everything we need is here on this paper. Seven bottles: three are poison; two are wine; one will get us safely through the black fire, and one will get us back through the purple."

"But how do we know which to drink?" Ron asked, before blushing as he realized how stupid the question was.

"Give me a minute." Hermione answered patiently.

"And be quiet in the meantime." Harmony snapped at the boys, already having several hypotheses down. While her twin walked up and down the line, muttering to herself and pointing at them, Harmony fished out a small notebook from her pocket and a mechanical pencil, then started writing things down. If either one of the ends was not the potion to go back, the second clue would probably not have been there, but that couldn't be counted on. As for the third, that meant not only nettle wine was one of the large or small bottles, since there were one large bottle and two small bottles, one of them was probably it as it was the smallest. If the second from the left and right could both be tasted, that means they were nettle wine and not poison, so the leftmost and the third from the right (the one just right of the center-most bottle) were both poison. The right-most could not be poison as it was different from the one on the left, so it had to be the potion back. So the conclusion was that of the two remaining bottles… _This is too cliché to be true, right? I mean, I could have blindly guessed it from the start…_ she thought weakly, she opened her mouth, but did not get to speak, for…

"Got it!" Hermione cried "The smallest bottle will get us through the black fire, toward the Stone."

"There's only enough for one, it's just too small…" Harmony didn't voice the fact that the bottles had to automatically refill or there wouldn't have been enough, the one who came before them was surely not stupid enough to leave enough there for another to come after them with. The three of them looked at each other and Harmony quickly pretended to do the same. "Which one will get you back through the purple flames?"

Hermione pointed to a rounded bottle at the right end of the line, which was the third smallest, with only enough for two or three people, it seemed. "You guys drink that, go back to the brooms and use them to get past Fluffy, go straight to the Owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, we need him. I might be able to hold Snape off for a while, but I'm no match for him really." Harry told them.

"But Harry, what if You-Know-Who is with him?" Hermione asked.

"Well… I was lucky once, wasn't I?" Harry gestured at his scar "I might get lucky again." His smile seemed rather weak, as if he was steeling himself to die.

Hermione's lip trembled, then she suddenly charged Harry and threw her arms around him. Harmony thought Ron seemed marginally jealous, so she concluded she needed to stomp on him a lot to get rid of his jealous streak if she was going to let the bloke anywhere near her baby sister in the future. "_Hermione_!" Harry exclaimed in shock. Then again, Harmony thought, it might be better to hook Hermione up with Harry, he seemed to be a nicer guy in general than Ron. Of course, it all depended on Hermione's preferences… and depended on which boy ended up acting more asinine later on.

"Harry, you're a great wizard, you know." Ron told him with a man-hug as soon as Hermione let go.

"I'm not as good as you guys." Harry said earnestly.

Hermione laughed shrilly "Us? Books! And cleverness! There are more important things—friendship and bravery and—oh Harry— be _careful_!"

"You drink first. You are sure which is which, aren't you?" Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Positive." Hermione's hand, reaching for the rounded bottle, was blocked by her older twin.

"There doesn't seem to be enough for all of us. I will stay here and set up what traps I can to delay whoever is after the Stone in case you can't hold him off long enough for Dumbledore to arrive." Harmony stated briskly.

"_Harmony!_" Hermione hissed "How could you say that?"

"Always have a contingency plan, sister, always." She turned her attention partly to Ron at that. "Neither of you two have any knowledge in traps and ambushes, so you should go back and send the message to Dumbledore. Good luck." She gave them a nod which Hermione reluctantly returned, then glared at Ron until he too agreed while clamping her hand onto Harry's mouth to stop the Noble Git (TM) from protesting. He was not nearly strong enough to remove her hand given he was basically holding his head in her hands and even if he punched/kicked her, her body armour would be too much to do real damage through. "Ron, you drink first." The boy shot her a dirty look, knowing that it was basically a declaration of his expendability and an effort to protect Hermione as much as possible. He still followed the instruction though without protest after a glance at Hermione.

"It's not poison?" Hermione asked anxiously.

"No, but it's like ice." He said. Hermione picked up the flask at that and drank too.

"Go, before it wears off." Harmony ordered.

"Good luck, be care—" Hermione was cut off when Harmony brusquely turned her and Ron around and shoved them toward the purple flames. They went through with several reluctant looks over their shoulders.

"Now that that's done with, go ahead, Harry, I need to set up some explosives as a trap just in case… whoever it is, especially Voldemort, will never expect those. If anyone comes back through that door but you, I'll set them off." She elected not to tell Harry about the refilling potions since he'd insist she go back to safety as well, being the Dumb Fucking Noble Git he was.

Harry nodded, took a deep breath, picked up the smallest bottle and faced the black flames, "Here I go." He said quietly before draining it in one gulp and marching forward through the black fire while Harmony planted two bars of C-4 just in front of the black fire doorway and tried to move the desk to the other side to create a bunkered position to shield herself from any blasts, but it seemed the desk was fixed to the floor. So she had to huddle in the corner and try to conjure something as a shield, which didn't work, while she held both of her weapons, loaded and without safeties, before her, with the grenade launcher's stock pushed up against her shoulder as she knelt in the corner on one knee in standard recoil-bracing position.

It took five minutes exactly for the vial to refill itself. As soon as it had, Harmony dismantled her trap. Thinking for a moment, she realized that since Harry's clothes were unharmed, anything she was convinced was a part of herself would probably not be affected by the psychic-based fire screen. So, she marched in with both weapons at the ready, pistol held before her and grenade launcher braced against her shoulder. She entered in time to see Quirrell, sans turban, flailing madly trying to throw Harry off of him as both screamed. Quirrell's face looked blistered and burnt, and so did his hands and arms where Harry was touching his bare skin. The Mirror of Erised towered in the middle of the arena-like chamber, but she wasn't worried about it for now. Quirrell was the only possible threat at the moment.

Less than a second after Harmony entered the room, a 10mm Full Metal Jacket pistol round punched through one side of Quirrell's head and out the other. Two more followed within the next second and, after testing the door that had just sealed behind her and realizing it was locked, Harmony began to run at the two, shouting as she watched her friend stumble blindly before falling "Harry! Harry!" She called, but he gave no sign of consciousness. Both Harry and Quirrell had collapsed, so Harmony shoved her just-safetied grenade launcher in her holster before pulling Harry away from Quirrell just in case there was some sort of psychic feedback involved here. She checked his status, and found him still unconscious but breathing steadily, still, this was not good, Dumbledore needed to get here soon so they could take him to the Hospital Wing…

Then she got a good look at Quirrell's head, there was no hair to be hidden by the turban, which was weird… he might be hiding something on the back of his head… Harmony rolled his head to her right (his left) slightly with her left hand (she had her pistol in her right hand) and she gasped, there was a face there, with red, snake-like eyes, no nose to speak of, and no lips either. It hissed angrily at her and she raised an eyebrow at this violation of anatomical possibility, careful to avoid its gaze. This was Voldemort? He was really rather hideous wasn't he? She avoided eye contact and even then only barely managed to fend off his gradually weakening (it took several seconds for her to sense the slow weakening) attempts at Legilimency. That had been the wizarding term, she'd learned from a Hogwarts library book, for what muggles called mind-reading. She knew from the strength of his probes even when possessing a weak, quickly dying (in body) and already dead (in mind) servant that she needed a lot more training before she could hope to withstand his probes at full strength, but for now what she had would do, especially if she distracted him enough…

"Hello, Voldemort, pleasant day, isn't it?" She smirked, looking elsewhere in a show of contempt and to shore up her mental defences against his battering. It felt like she was being hit over the head with a rifle butt repeatedly.

"What have you and the boy done to my servant, you foolish girl?" Quirrell's body was no longer reacting to commands, and neither was Quirrell, it felt like he had been… killed somehow, but how? This young child couldn't possibly be able to kill a full-grown wizard within moments of entering the room…

"Well, maybe you'll figure it out with time, maybe you won't." The constant pressure on her mind was getting severely irritating, so, since eye contact, even one-sided, provided better psychic flux targeting data than anything else, she stabbed her finger into Voldemort's left eye, eliciting a screech of pain. Harmony, wincing as it felt like she was hit over the head with a hammer, which, in the scope of psionic warfare, she had been, hooked her finger, then pulled it and the eyeball impaled on it out of the socket. She twisted it around sharply to tear away the muscles and nerves of the eye, and shoved it in front of what little nose he actually had for the monster to stare at before she did the same with his other eye. Her vision, which had been slowly tinting with a thin red veneer, was now as if she was looking through a red stained glass panel at the world as her pulse pounded in her ears.

She punched him in the mouth something on the order of forty times and used her knife to dig out all of Voldemort's teeth, all the while aware of his increasingly desperate but rapidly weakening (the inferior targeting data didn't help his psychic probes) battering on her mind as she did her best to extend her outer barriers to completely envelope Quirrell's body and seal him in at least long enough to deal some more pain. It was evident that Voldemort favoured attacking before retreating, so she was trying to make sure he would be slow enough to retreat to, if possible, kill effectively. After all, most possessors like this wouldn't be able to survive without a weak mind nearby to possess, right? Harry's mind was decidedly not weak from what she had seen of him toasting Quirrell by contact alone, so…

She finished flaying his face, tinted red through her bright, insane eyes, alive, much faster than the monstrous thing deserved to be skinned, rammed her thumbs up his nostrils, tore his mostly-flat nose off, pulled out her pistol and pointed it up where his nose would have been, to make sure he didn't have any idea what it was that was killing him, just in case contact with his flesh tipped him off to the size and shape of the implement. She fired two more bullets to blow the top of Quirrell's head out, before she emptied the remaining ten bullets of the clip all over Voldemort's face.

She was still turning Quirrell's head into a bloody pulp, now with her combat-gloved fists, when she felt Voldemort's very weak presence punch a hole with relative ease through her over-extended outer barrier placed around Quirrell. That presence fled into the distance and she lost track of it, focusing on reinforcing her own personal barriers. She sighed and got up from the bloody mess she'd made, the red fading slowly from her vision, picked Harry up, checked that he was stabilizing, and laid him down near the entrance of the room. She aimed her grenade launcher at Quirrell's corpse, which lay on the far side of the arena, well past the Mirror of Erised. One High Explosive Dual Purpose grenade was enough to spread the remains over a large area of the arena.

* * *

A/N: STAT INCREASE! Sadism (Torture Satisfaction) +1 (from 0/5 to 1/5), Psychic Warfare (Offence) +1 (from 0/7 to 1/7) Psychic Warfare (Defence) +1 (from 2/7 to 3/7).

STAT HINDERANCE: Command Skill (Self-Control Skill) progression hindered by display of lack thereof.

* * *

After that was dealt with, Harmony suddenly found herself feeling everything from first person perspective again instead of pseudo-third-person. She bent over and violently vomited on the floor, shivering as she fell to her blood-soaked hands and knees, looked away from the blood on her clothes, it took several moments and heaves before she finished. She swished with water from her canteen (waterfall style, she didn't want the bottle to need washing from the smell of vomit), spat it out, drank some water, then noticed a lump in Harry's pocket. Her eyes widened as she crawled over, wiping her mouth on her sleeve "Ah yes, the Philosopher's Stone!" She whispered to herself, fishing it out and pocketing it, thinking about how she really wanted to know how it worked. She knew wanting to forget the last few minutes of insanity (what Aunt Hannah called "Monster Slayer Mode" or just "Slayer Mode" and Aunt Tanya labelled as "Blood Rage") was impossible, so she couldn't dwell on that… _The Mirror of Erised… could I use…_

She shakily got to her feet before the mirror, and gasped, for it showed herself pulling a rather thick book, and what looked like a small walkie-talkie, out of her pocket and putting it back in, and somehow, the objects _fell into her pocket_. She looked at them after taking them out again, and blinked owlishly. One read _Medical Nanotechnology Basics_ and the other had only two buttons, "Call" and "End", it was obvious it only corresponded to one destination… but where, and who was on the other side?

She pushed "Call" and the piece of technology came to life, lighting up and, after a few seconds of ring-tone, projecting a hologram above it of a bald man with stubble on his face "Hello, I would like to inquire about how the Philosopher's Stone works, scientifically if possible…"

"Ah, it is good to see that SOMEONE has finally taken interest in how it works scientifically instead of all this psychic stuff. I hid the basic explanatory book within the Mirror of Erised, for someone to find. I am glad that someone is you, Harmony Shepard, there is much you must know about the world, there is much you must do, to work with your family for the ultimate purpose of saving not only the world, but the galaxy as we know it."

Harmony gaped at the sudden and completely random revelation she'd just been saddled with for several seconds before asking "So, uh, what is your name, sir?" She gave no sign that he had gotten her name right, but she suspected this bald guy didn't need a sign to know he was right.

"Call me Kane."

* * *

A/N: Well, I did tell you this was coming some time ago, when Kane was raving about his hatred of the UNSC, I think.

After reading "The Honeymooners" I just realized there's going to be a lot of wizarding press in Harmony's future. I can imagine what she would do to them if they insisted on harassing the Golden Trio beyond her tolerances: learn Psi Shockwave from Yuriko (this is the same as Yuri's ability to fry nearby minds with that wave thing, but with more directed effects) and murder the whole lot of them. Also, she may choose to follow Harry and Ginny on their honeymoon as security detail (very, very necessary security detail) if they get hitched before year 2000, it would be Harmony's last vacation for a long, long time as she is about to get into her planned career for good.

Now the big question is, will Harmony's existence have angst and dumb boys in it? I think it would be hard not to feel something for an attractive, generally pleasant (when not in combat) girl if she lets you cry on her shoulder in sixth year and act as an anchor, a friend, someone to hug you (despite mental vomiting on her part) and tell you everything will be better (only put up with this bullshit because of it all being part of the Saving The Wizarding World Mission Description, but Harry doesn't need to know that). However, given I'm giving the Weasleys a major facelift (they chose the worst possible actress to play Ginny, I mean, _I_ as an average Joe know cuter orange-haired girls than her, and I know a much better-looking orange-haired boy than Ron's actor) I'd feel bad not sticking Harry with the revised Ginny. Besides, I _highly_ doubt Harmony would put up with Harry's Saving-People-Thing or the idiocy of most other wizards.

By the way, I might be eliminating some of the older, more archaic-thinking members of wizarding society (e.g. Muriel) a la Blood Rage Harmony. She might also burn down half the Ministry of Magic with Fiendfyre to terminate certain magical contracts, namely a marriage contract between Ginny and someone else who is not Harry. In what may be her own words at some point "If I'm shoving my best friend away from me and at you on a silver platter, I expect you to be there to snap him up". Of course, she's not beyond verbally beating up (in a way that can crack abuse victims) Harry for being a failure at communicating his thoughts and emotions sometimes.

REVIEW!


	10. Come Marching Home…

A/N: I suddenly, after reading "Hermione Granger is Stupid", feel severely sorry for McLaggen in 6th year, especially if he does something stupid on the Quidditch field and gets Harry hurt. Harmony's anger levels would already be through the roof at her sister and Ron neglecting the guy who's supposed to save the world ("We need to keep watch over him! Make sure his moronic Good Guy Syndrome doesn't get him or any more of our side killed!"), and if anyone gets him hurt on her watch… McLaggen will be lucky to still have either head the next day.

Also guarantee that Jane has no problems breaking Hermione's nose after she tries to charm her parents… and fails on step one with her mother due to psi-resistance. That's when Hermione's finally going to know just who her mother is. You'd be surprised at what a little make-up, a change in hairstyle and posture set can do in hiding one's identity completely from (and only from) _people who absolutely trust you_, despite keeping the same name.

Ron will also be lucky to ever get with Hermione when he, under interrogation by Harmony, says he wants to wait for marriage. The response will be prompt, violent, painful, and enlightening. On the subject of Molly Weasley being traditional and getting in the way… "In case you forgot, your engagement only lasted one month, Bill was born six and a half months after you married, and he was _not born prematurely_! Well guess what, times have changed even more than your fucking _medieval_ upbringing since then!"

**Warning: EXTREME FACELIFT OF MOST WITCHES AND WIZARDS**. I will make this absolutely clear later on. Believe me, if they look to be 80-90 at age 150+ like Dumbledore does, there is no reason why Molly at 45 should not appear 29 (x0.6 to x0.7 multiplier in appearances vs. reality once age 30 or so is exceeded, varies with person and lineage). Psychic powers go a long way to maintenance of the body, which is part of why… I'll reveal more details later. I also made Molly 3 years older than in canon because the kids' spacing is too close for comfort otherwise.

* * *

Chapter 10: Come Marching Home…

"So, uh, Mr. Kane, could you give me a brief overview of how the, uh," She was strongly inclined to describe the thing as Glorified Undersized Brick due to its general shape and colour but refrained from doing so "Stone works? I'm hoping that we do not have to destroy it to prevent Voldemort from using it to regain a body."

Kane chuckled "Ah, young Harmony, you have much to learn. Rest assured though that Voldemort will be thoroughly unable to use the Stone to regain a body. It is based not on psychic abilities, but on technology, and that, as something Voldemort will never understand and will always deny, will never allow him to create a new body to inhabit even with the so-called 'Elixir of Life'. After all, the Stone is keyed to its users, and all the Elixir of Life contains are essentially nanites and some raw materials for them to use while screening the body for mutations and malfunctions of all sorts. How do you think Nicholas and Perenelle still look to be in their prime even after so many years of being maintained by the Elixir of Life? If it worked the way Voldemort thought it did, they would have grown old already, since they were not born into immortality, and remained old and wrinkled basically forever."

"It's possible to be born into immortality?" Harmony asked incredulously.

"Yes, my child, I was the first of my kind, engineered to be so, but there have been others since, others that destiny brought into the world with an unfortunate conjunction of sets of genes that result in genetic immortality." Kane looked sheepish all of a sudden "In the early days of my duty to watch and safeguard mankind I may… uh… have had some… um… okay, quite a lot of indiscretions and propagated my genes into the population." Harmony snorted at this "Members of what I've come to call the Old Families are few and far in between, but there are some… in fact, I know that there is one of my descendants living in the village of Hogsmeade right now. It took a perfect storm, practically, for your mother and aunt to be born with the right set of genes to vault up to my level. There have been a few others in the past, but eventually they died as statistics caught up and their psychic foresight, weakened by disuse, failed them."

"Why are you revealing all this…" she thought about what she should address him as, then settled on "Ancestor?"

"Because I think you should get the first shot at changing the world starting with the psychos that call themselves magicians." Kane growled "I cannot be too active in the world at this time. I may have given the Allies enough time to destroy Stalin and prevented him from nuking the whole world in his madness, by prompting him to hopelessly overextend himself, but I need to lay low for now… do not tell anyone about me unless you ask me first. There are many untrustworthy people, even at Hogwarts…"

"You are the Kane that started World War Three?" Harmony asked quietly.

"Stalin was insane enough to be preparing to try to conquer the world, I just got him to attack before building up too much, so the Allies managed to hold him off and eventually take him down. Why do you think the Soviets didn't get and try to use nukes until the end days of the war? I hindered their nuclear program and their missile program. I helped ensure Stalin's defeat… and good riddance. Anyhow, why are you talking about destroying the Stone? The nanotechnology involved in it would provide an invaluable step forward for human science, particularly medical science, although it will take years, maybe decades, to begin to understand."

"I have no doubt that, after this close brush with Voldemort, that Albus Dumbledore will wish to destroy the Stone and persuade Flamel that it is the best idea."

"Well then, I'll transmit some instructions to your handheld…" A holographic interface popped up over the handheld and Harmony's jaw dropped again. "Just set the stone on the pad marked 'Transporter' and It will teleport to me, I'll keep it safe while we reason with Dumbledore."

* * *

It took about a minute more before Dumbledore arrived, and Kane had been refusing to tell Harmony how the Stone worked before the Headmaster arrived. "Ah, good day, Professor Dumbledore." Kane said to the old man as soon as he appeared in the room.

"Hello." Dumbledore said politely, then glanced around "Harry!" He rushed over surprisingly quickly for such an old man and with a swish of his wand checked his status (the yellow-green glow the wand-tip produced meant he was stable but not in great condition) levitated Harry, "I am sorry, but I must take Harry to the Hospital Wing, and Harmony should come too. Quirinius…" He blinked at the mess of blood, mushy flesh, and tattered cloth "is beyond our help."

"Alright, then, Harmony, keep the connection open, we'll need to have a nice chat about the Philosopher's Stone as soon as possible, Headmaster Dumbledore." Kane said pleasantly.

"The blood's Quirrel's and the Dark Wanker's, not mine, Professor." Harmony told him. Dumbledore nodded as if he'd been expecting this, but he was paying more of his attention to Kane than anywhere else.

Still, the Headmaster did not let the wording slide "Language, Miss Shepard."

"If the Dark Trash wants us to call him by a name he fashioned for himself, then we are only playing into his hands by calling him that name, it is much better to use something more original, untraceable, and offensive."

Dumbledore felt taken aback, but couldn't deny that she was making sense. Still, it was probably better to get everyone to acknowledge the guy had a name at all instead of getting them started by telling them to insult Riddle. That would result in even fewer people saying anything other than 'You-Know-Who'. However, once they got used to saying his name for himself, they really should shift over to something less distinctive… "Yes, we must speak of the Philosopher's Stone. How did you find out about it, may I ask?"

"I basically gave the damned thing to Nick, that's how."

Dumbledore stopped running abruptly in the middle of the hallway outside the forbidden third-floor corridor "You… you are the Kane that Nicholas spoke of?" He sounded astonished.

"At your service, Professor Dumbledore." Kane inclined his head with a small smile "I can tell you right now that even though Nick will want to destroy the Stone, it is completely unnecessary. By no means can Voldemort build himself a new body with it. It is simply not within the parameters of the hardware."

"I think you understand why I must take that with a grain of salt."

"Yes, just let me speak to Nick, let him ask me a few questions to confirm my identity, and he will understand. Now let's get that boy to the Hospital Wing and assure Miss Shepard's sister and other friend that she is okay." Kane suggested as they resumed moving through the school.

* * *

About an hour after they deposited Harry in the Hospital Wing, Harmony was under the impression that she was way out of her depth. Since Kane insisted she be there to listen (and warned Dumbledore not to Obliviate her later), Harmony just sat mutely through the conversation of the three adults. After ascertaining Kane's identity, Nicholas Flamel was very friendly and agreed that it was for the best to keep the Stone instead of destroying it. Kane suggested that they spread the news of the Stone's destruction and that Nicholas and Perenelle should go into hiding until this ruckus was over i.e. until Voldemort was permanently destroyed. Sure, they could use the Stone to bait Voldemort, but they couldn't kill him yet anyways, or at least, not by any means they knew of at present.

Kane brought up a hypothesis about something called Horc-something, but Dumbledore and Flamel (who had both cut him off before he could finish the word with "NO!") both felt that that was a subject unsuitable for children's ears, so the Immortal didn't bother continuing. Still, he made it abundantly clear that the Stone didn't need to be destroyed. If Nicholas had tired of life, he should just give the Stone back to Kane. Harmony noticed that her distant ancestor, as he claimed to be, was carefully avoiding the subject of Nicholas opening his damned magic-shut eyes and taking a good look at the sheer progress Muggles had made over the past six hundred years. It seemed he too had concluded wizards were currently too ignorant to be allowed to explore Muggle technology freely, they needed some guidance, to be eased into it. That was if they ever opened their minds and saw the possibilities of technology, something which Harmony vaguely doubted would ever occur…

The conversation drifted to more mundane topics after that, and Kane suggested she go clean herself up and take a nice rest from the work she'd done. Sure, she wasn't really hurt or tired, but it would be nice to get the Voldemort-filth off her clothes… Needless to say, she was supposed to come right back to the Headmaster's Office afterward so they could agree on what they should tell Harry and the others. The four of them agreed that it would be better to leave Harmony's role in the affair of the Stone out for now and just say that she'd arrived in time to stab and kill Quirrell before Harry could die.

* * *

_Hogwarts Hospital Wing, Three Days Later (Omniscient POV)_

Dumbledore was sitting by Harry's bed when he woke up, thanks to Madam Pomfrey alerting the Headmaster when he was healed enough to be waking up at any moment. "Good afternoon, Harry." He said with a smile.

Harry stared at him for his first few moments awake, then started babbling "Sir! The Stone! It was Quirrell! He's got the Stone! Sir, quick—"

"Calm yourself, dear boy, you are a little behind the times, Quirrell does not have the Stone." Dumbledore soothed him, or tried to.

"Then who does? Sir, I—" Harry was half-panicking by now.

"Harry, please relax, or Madam Pomfrey will have me thrown out." It seemed the half-humorous approach worked. Harry gulped, them looked around, finally realizing he was in the Hospital Wing. The bed he laid on had white linen sheets and next to him was a rather large table piled high with candy of all shapes, colours and sizes.

"Tokens from your friends and admirers." Dumbledore had followed Harry's gaze and he beamed "What happened down in the dungeons between you, Harmony and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows. I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley were responsible for trying to send you a toilet seat. No doubt they thought it would amuse you. Madam Pomfrey, however, felt it might not be very hygienic, and confiscated it."

"How long have I been in here?"

"Three days. Mr. Ronald Weasley, Miss Shepard and Miss Granger will be most relieved you have come round, they have been extremely worried."

"But sir, the Stone—" Harry tried again.

"I see you are not to be distracted. Very well, the Stone. Professor Quirrell did not manage to take it from you. I arrived in time to prevent that, although you were doing very well on your own, I must say."

"You got there? You got Hermione's owl?" Harry asked joyously.

"We must have crossed in midair. No sooner had I reached London than it became clear to me that the place I should be was the one I had just left. Harmony arrived in the room just in time to pull Quirrell off you, and I came as soon as possible, we dealt with him together—" That had been part of what they had agreed to tell Harry. However, Dumbledore was still rather worried about the principled, gutsy, tall, heavy, frizzy-haired and highly dangerous brunette who had to date killed a troll or two and completely slaughtered Quirrell. Especially disturbing was what Harmony had described of her treatment of Voldemort. It was remarkably… dark for someone who claimed to have such a Light-side moral compass most of the time.

"It was _Harmony_ who pulled him off me?" Harry gaped.

"I feared I might be too late to be of help, since the potion bottle was still empty when I arrived and forced me to delay briefly." Severus was very skilled indeed as it had taken Dumbledore about two full minutes to break down all the wards, barriers and shields of the room, then extinguish the magical fire, knowing full well the bottle's refill time may be too long to be of use.

"You nearly were, I couldn't have kept him off the Stone much longer before she arrived, and I doubt Harmony could have either."

"Oh, she was doing a fine job of it, but we are not speaking of the Stone, child, but you, the effort involved nearly killed you. For one terrible moment there, I was afraid it had. As for the Stone, it has been destroyed." That was also an agreed-upon public front.

"Destroyed? But your friend—Nicolas Flamel—" Harry began blankly.

"Oh, you know about Nicholas?" Dumbledore said, sounding delighted. "You did do the thing properly, didn't you? Well, Nicholas and I have had a little chat, and agreed it's all for the best."

"But that means he and his wife will die, won't they?" Harry asked, sounding rather forlorn.

"They have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, they will die." The smile was almost audible in his voice when he spoke next "To one as young as you, I'm sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, _very_ long day." Harmony would've described it as a very, very long TV show marathon given how entertaining the world could be "After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all — the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them."

There was silence on Harry's end, while Dumbledore hummed a little. Or at least it sounded like Dumbledore through the audio feed, Harry was probably still too busy being shocked to respond. But when he finally did, he started with "Sir? I've been thinking… Sir, even if the Stone's gone, Vol-, I mean, You-Know-Who—"

"Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself." Dumbledore said wisely.

"Yes, sir. Well, Voldemort's going to try other ways of coming back, isn't he? I mean, he hasn't gone, has he?" That was, at best, a laughable idea given he was around enough to possess someone, and you couldn't be very weak and too close to death to do that.

"No, Harry, he has not. He is still out there somewhere, perhaps looking for another body to share… not being truly alive, he cannot be killed. He left Quirrell to die; he shows just as little mercy to his followers as his enemies. Nevertheless, Harry, while you may only have delayed his return to power, it will merely take someone else who is prepared to fight what seems a losing battle next time—and if he is delayed again, and again, why, he may never return to power."

There was a moment of silence in which Harry nodded but stopped as it made his head hurt "Sir, there are some other things I'd like to know, if you can tell me… things I want to know the truth about."

"The truth" There was a long, tired sigh from Dumbledore at that "It is a beautiful and terrible

thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution. However, I shall answer your questions unless I have a very good reason not to, in which case I beg you'll forgive me. I shall not, of course, lie." He sounded almost Vorlon-like if Harmony's memories of watching Babylon 5, before the show got too absurd, was anything to go by.

"Well… Voldemort said that he only killed my mother because she tried to stop him from killing me. But why would he want to kill me in the first place?"

Dumbledore's sigh was even deeper "Alas, the first thing you ask me, I cannot tell you. Not today. Not now. You will know, one day… put it from your mind for now, Harry. When you are older… I know you hate to hear this… when you are ready, you will know."

"But why couldn't Quirrell touch me?" Harry had changed the topic, probably as he realized he wasn't going to get a straight answer from Dumbledore.

"Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign… to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good."

There was some more silence, before Harry asked "And the Invisibility Cloak — do you know who sent it to me?"

"Ah—your father happened to leave it in my possession, and I thought you might like it. Useful things . . . your father used it mainly for sneaking off to the kitchens to steal food when he was here."

"And there's something else…" Harry was slow and hesitant here.

"Fire away."

"Quirrell said Snape—"

"_Professor _Snape, Harry."

The conversation continued from there, both participants completely unaware of the small microphone planted just outside Harry's window, which Harmony picked up the following night while going out to fly. She had activated it as she'd seen Dumbledore moving toward the Hospital Wing and shut it off as he left, then retrieved the device. When she listened to the recording, she mentally noted several things. _I am willing to gamble my life on there being some sort of absurd prophecy surrounding Harry and Voldemort, which caused Voldemort to try to kill Harry to prevent the Prophecy coming true and in doing so fulfilled it, or at least part of it._ She thought bitterly at Dumbledore's denial of Harry's question on why Voldemort wanted to kill him. _Mr. Gandalf-In-Disguise never told me, or Flamel, or even Kane_—She was still taking that man's words with a boulder of salt, but the stuff in the tech manual was too definitive and sensible to really deny—_any of this stuff. It's good that I planted the feed, or we'd be lacking critical operational Intel._

When the recording got to Harry's father saving Snape's life, Harmony snorted derisively, _You know, I would be more prone to believing it if Dumbledore said Snape was in love with Harry's mother and was protecting him just because of Lily Potter. However, Snape still picked on and hated Harry because he looked like his father, at least, it sounds vaguely, just vaguely, less absurd than what Dumbledore is feeding Harry, the only way Snape could possibly have clung onto such a ridiculous obsession for so long was if he had major regrets regarding her, never had another woman interested in him in a truly romantic way, or both._ As for how Harry got the Stone out of the Mirror, it was within the Mirror's design parameters to act as a storage device for some objects, or so Kane had claimed… and demonstrated.

Kane's manual had already told her many things. For example, the Stone was in fact a nano-technological device that would scan the genetic and physiological data of the user into it, and would repair/reconstruct damaged genetic material, damaged tissues, etc. using nanites. Through a similar but psychic-based mechanism, most psychics could extend their lifespan. Those who did not understand this would probably only pull the typical Wizard life expectancy of 100 to 150 years, especially as Wizard-kind didn't understand many of the health risks out there. According to Kane, a magic-capable person who understood at a molecular or ideally quantum level how the body worked should be able to sustain his or her life for _at least_ 300 years or more. According to Kane, it was not as good as the full-body scanning and maintenance abilities that full Immortals, combined with mutation selectivity capacity, but it was still impressive. When Dumbledore gave her the communicator back, she asked Kane how old he actually was. His response was that he was "antediluvian, take of that what you will". He also told her that the more DNA repair genes, anti-toxin genes, damage control genes (e.g. cholesterol digesters), and backup capacity someone had, the longer their natural life was likely to be.

* * *

When the three of them were finally allowed to visit Harry, only Harmony's firm grip on Hermione's shoulder prevented her from throwing her arms around him. "_Harry!_" The less disciplined twin had cried out "Oh, Harry, we were sure you were going to—Dumbledore was so worried—"

"The whole school's talking about it, and Harmony won't give us any details." Ron shot a dirty look at her "What really happened?"

Harry told them about Quirrell, the Mirror, the Stone, and Voldemort. Hermione actually screamed out loud when he told them what was under Quirrell's turban. After Harry said he passed out, Hermione looked to her older twin. "What were you doing, Harmony?"

"I came in, knifed Quirrell to death, and checked Harry was still alive and breathing before I noticed Quirrell had no hair under the turban, so I turned his head and saw Voldemort's snake of a face. Since mind magic is most dangerous with eye contact I gouged his eyes out to prevent him seeing me and smashed his face to a pulp." She knew full well it was dumb pissing off someone so much more powerful, at least magically, than oneself, but she suspected it was the same sort of psychotic, righteous fury that had fuelled her Aunt Hannah in the torturing death of Stalin. "After that I stood back and blew his remains apart. That was when Professor Dumbledore came in, we grabbed you" she was looking steadily at Harry as she lied to their faces, it was a necessary deception given how useful the technology could come to be in the future "and brought you up here, then he spoke with me for a bit and let me leave. So, what happened to the Stone anyhow, Harry?" She started leading the conversation back on track.

"Dumbledore says it has been destroyed, it was all for the best, he and Flamel agreed."

"So the Stone's gone? Flamel's just going to _die_?" Ron asked incredulously.

Harry nodded "That's what I said, but Dumbledore thinks that… what was it? Oh, yeah, 'to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.'" Harmony snorted again internally, so says the resigned, those too close-minded to push the boundaries of reality further, to dream of venturing to the farthest galaxies, to venture between different universes, realities… Okay, so maybe she was getting a bit ahead of herself, but still, there was always more to see, more to experience, more to discover. Progress, she had concluded long ago, was eternal, be it forward or backward, and with every bit of progress the universe became something new, something wondrous… _Back to the pragmatic for now, dear._ Her rational mind reminded her. They needed after all to progress there first. It would be a long time until she could watch fleets of battleships and carriers glide silently through space as she had in the Mirror of Erised earlier, but she believed, no, knew, that it would be true someday.

"I always said he was off his rocker." Ron looked impressed at the madness of his hero.

"So what happened to you two?" Harry asked

"Well, we got back all right, though it took a while to manoeuvre past Fluffy, we ran into Dumbledore in the Entrance Hall, he already knew, he just said, 'Harry's gone after him,

hasn't he?' and hurtled off to the third floor."

"D'you think he meant you to do it? Sending you your fathers cloak and everything?" Ron wondered.

Hermione exploded "Well, if he did—I mean to say—that's terrible—you could have been killed."

Harry showed surprising insight for a boy his age "No, it isn't, he's a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don't think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It's almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could."

"Harry's right, Dumbledore wanted Harry to learn to fight Voldemort while he was weak, to make sure Harry doesn't freeze up when Voldemort comes back and we need to fight him at full power." Harmony said quickly in her usual clipped tone. "It makes perfect sense as a training exercise."

"Yeah, Dumbledore's off his rocker, all right." Ron sounded first proud and then excited "Listen, you've got to be up for the end-of-year feast tomorrow. The points are all in and Slytherin won, of course—you missed the last Quidditch match, we were steamrollered by Ravenclaw without you—but the food'll be good."

At that time, Madam Pomfrey bustled over "You've had nearly fifteen minutes, now OUT."

After a couple more words, Hermione led Ron out while Harmony leaned in so that her mouth was next to Harry's ear, Madam Pomfrey chose to conveniently look the other way for a moment "Can I borrow your Cloak?" She whispered.

"Yeah, sure, no problem." Harry was obviously oblivious, which was mildly amusing.

"Alright, please leave, Miss Shepard, you can see him later." Pomfrey's wry smile, on the other hand, was not so much amusing as vaguely disturbing, Harmony's mind recoiled in revulsion at the idea. _Surely she didn't think… ugh_.

Harmony went with the order and spent the rest of her time until the end-of-year feast working in the Library under her Invisibility Cloak taking microfilm photos of book pages. She didn't particularly care for the end-of-year feast or the rumours flying around about what Harry, Quirrell and her had done in the dungeons. Probably the most outrageous was that Quirrell was a pedophile and had roped them into a threesome, and Harry had killed the older man in a fit of jealousy in their last tryst. Given the appraisal most older boys had of her and her sister, both rapidly maturing and standing near five foot three, apparently an acceptable height to most males, Harmony thought it was less improbable than some of the other rumours. However, given the scrawny, Noble Git he was, Harmony's opinion of Harry being involved in an affair at his age and size was "I am not into Shota, thank you very much". As for how she knew of that term… blame the Internet and her mother's total faith in her (no parental controls or monitoring of her computer).

The Great Hall was already full by the time Harry arrived outside the doors, and she met him there with a nod. "You ready to head in and face the music?"

"Wouldn't it be better if we head in separately?" Harry said nervously.

"Would it make you feel more comfortable to be the only subject of everyone's attention?"

"Well, if you put it that way… let's do this."

Harmony nodded brusquely "Let's go." She shoved her hands in her pockets, resting them on her familiar weapons and out of everyone's sight as she marched into the Hall in a posture bleeding confidence and power, Harry, on the other hand, followed with a more relaxed walk. The walls were decorated in the Slytherin colours of green and silver to celebrate Slytherin winning the House Cup for the seventh year in a row. A huge banner showing the serpent of Slytherin covered the wall behind the High Table, but Harmony paid it no heed as she sat down at the Gryffindor Table. There was a sudden silence when the two of them walked in, and then everyone began talking at once in a low roar of loud voices. People were standing up to get a better look at the brunette girl and the scrawny black-haired boy who stood about a foot shorter than his companion.

However, Dumbledore arrived moments later and the babble of excited voices died away "Another year gone! And I must trouble you with an old man's wheezing waffle before we sink our teeth into our delicious feast. What a year it has been! Hopefully your heads are all a little fuller than they were… you have the whole summer ahead to get them nice and empty before next year starts… and the points stand thus: In fourth place, Gryffindor, with three hundred and two points; in third, Hufflepuff, with three hundred and fifty-two; Ravenclaw has four hundred and twenty-six and Slytherin, four hundred and eighty-two."

There was a lot of cheering and stamping from the Slytherins, Harmony merely smirked, she suspected that Dumbledore was going to announce more points to Gryffindor for what they had pulled off with respect to the Stone. Harry, however, was looking toward the Slytherin Table—she turned around to see Malfoy banging his goblet on the table—with a rather sick expression.

"Yes, yes, well done, Slytherin. However, recent events must be taken into account." Dumbledore told them all. The room went very still, and the Slytherins' smiles faded a little. "Ahem, I have a few last-minute points to dish out. Let me see… yes… First, to Mr. Ronald Weasley…" Ron's face turned purple, such was his blush. "…for the best-played game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years, I award Gryffindor House forty points."

Gryffindor cheered loudly, but it was still sounded bittersweet as they were still last place. Snape had taken too many points in Potions and Harmony alone couldn't net all the questions in other classes, since the teachers were not supposed to only ask one student to answer all their questions. Usually Harmony got almost everything Hermione wasn't asked, but the last weeks Hermione had been asked just about nothing since she never volunteered to answer anymore. Percy was telling the other Prefects "My brother, you know! My youngest brother! Got past McGonagall's giant chess set!"

When there was silence again, Dumbledore continued "Second, to Miss Hermione Granger… for the use of cool logic in the face of fire, I award Gryffindor House forty points." The cheering was much louder this time, since they'd just beat Hufflepuff, and when it finally stopped, Dumbledore continued with "Third, to Miss Harmony Shepard, for self-sacrifice, tactical sense, and neutralizing the threat, I award Gryffindor forty-five points."

"We're about to win, guys." Harmony told Hermione quietly while everyone else was screaming, they were now second place.

"Why?"

"Do you think Dumbledore would tie us with Slytherin and leave it at that? I have an idea as to how many points he's going to give Harry"

"Fourth, to Mr. Harry Potter… for pure nerve and outstanding courage, I award Gryffindor House fifty-five points." Harmony rolled her eyes in annoyance as the other Gryffindors, even her sister, yelled themselves hoarse. She thought about what the tiebreaker could possibly be while everyone was screeching away, then realized something, getting up and walking a few places down the table.

Clapping a vice grip on Neville's shoulder, she leaned in and informed him quite calmly "Neville, try not to suffocate from people jumping on you and hugging you."

"What?" She didn't answer and left the pudgy-faced boy mystified.

Dumbledore was smiling widely as "There are all kinds of courage, it takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. I therefore award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom." Harry, Ron and Hermione stood up to cheer while Fred and George jumped onto the Gryffindor table. Harmony simply stood and clapped before realizing that despite her joking, Neville _was_ in fact in serious danger of being crushed by the pile of people hugging him. She looked over at Malfoy, who looked about completely shocked and horrified. She also noted that even Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were celebrating the end of Slytherin's win streak. "Which means we need a little change of decoration." Dumbledore called over the applause.

He clapped his hands and in an instant the green hangings became scarlet and the silver became gold. The giant Slytherin serpent vanished and a Gryffindor lion took its place. Harmony was more interested in waiting for the food than this though, since she disliked lions, mostly due to the males being lazy bastards. In her family, the men did most of the housework, particularly whenever the world was at war. Harmony still remembered her father doing everything around the house and staying at home full-time (the biggest benefit of working for one's wife) when her mother was dealing with the Psychic Dominator Disaster.

Meanwhile, at the Head Table, Snape was shaking Professor McGonagall's hand with a horrible grimace that he may or may not have been trying to make into a smile. Other than scurrying out to get some more books onto microfilm, Harmony's last night at Hogwarts was uneventful. She snuck away before the party in the Gryffindor Common Room could start, borrowed the Cloak, and went back to the Library to finish off photographing one of the self-arranging bookshelves. She noted down in her tactical notebook (Aunt Tanya had shaken her head in amusement when she referred to it as that, since it was just a plain old notebook, nothing special) which shelves she'd done and which ones she had not. She was also cursing herself, looking forlornly at the un-photographed shelves, for not thinking of this earlier. After all, if she'd done this from the start she could have the entire Library, minus the Restricted Section, down already. Instead she had to be stupid and try to type things into her laptop. She should have known to collect as much data as possible and process it later when access to it is no longer possible…

Well, maybe she'd finish this task next year. All she needed was a small squad tasked to processing this data, putting it into computer files. After all, with all the misinformation the Ministries of Magic did to hide their existence, no one would believe even ten people all claiming to have had information on magic. If they could hide the Manhattan Project and other military secrets, it had to be perfectly possible to hide the processing of this information on magic.

* * *

From Harry's expression across the table from her, he had forgotten all about the exam results, which were coming to them right now. Hermione scored the top grades of the first years, Harmony occupied second place, followed by a few Ravenclaws, Harry and Ron. Even Neville scraped through, his horrifying Potions grade being made up in his average by his "Outstanding" grade (i.e. A or A+, by letter grades) in Herbology. It was too bad that the idiots Crabbe and Goyle did not fail, but it didn't matter.

The next day, their wardrobes were empty (Harmony never put anything in hers anyhow, she used her trunk to live out of, almost), the trunks were packed (or rather, re-packed), and they were ready to move out. Notes were handed out to all students, warning them not to use magic over the holidays. Harmony had read up on the laws about that, and it was clear it was just a way for the Pureblood supremacists to oppress Muggleborns. All the Ministry could detect without putting a Trace on a specific person was the use of magic, so basically if they detected it in areas with no other wizards, as was the case for most Muggleborn households, they would chalk it up to the Muggleborn doing magic. This allowed Purebloods to practice magic all they wanted at home while Muggleborns couldn't practice. Ah well, more time for pure psychic and combat training time for her…

What made her run to the train's bathroom halfway through the trip was a sudden thought she had. She pulled the communicator Kane had given her through the mirror from her pocket. He had instructed her to keep it with her at all times. She couldn't be sure that he wouldn't send her poison but if it was to be so, then wouldn't it be better if her mother remembered her father as a man in his prime and not a fading old creature? Besides, Kane had no motive to harm her father… "Kane? Do you have a moment?"

"My life is full of free time at the moment, my child, what troubles you?"

"Do you think… I could get some Elixir of Life for Dad? I mean, he's going to get old soon, and I want Mum to be with him as long as they want to stay together…"

"Don't you think you should be asking about yourself too?" Kane raised an eyebrow.

"I'll wait and see how quickly I age and how much work I have to do before I consider it."

"The best thing about the Elixir of Life is that it repairs the body more or less to the form it was in when the initial physiological and genetic scans were taken, young one, and I scanned your father just before he married your mother. They will have many decades, or even centuries, together, provided an accident does not happen to your father. We full-fledged Immortals, as long as we keep ourselves highly active and working hard, have a survival instinct which I'm sure you have heard of from your Mother and Aunt. Most others lack this, only seers and perhaps the most mentally active members of the Old Families can come close. Your Aunt Tanya has the ability to a lesser extent than your Mother and Aunt, but she is the only non-Immortal who has that sort of capacity to any extent whatsoever right now."

"What you just said was that Dad will go back physically to the state he was in when he was twenty-five, at his peak… I can't thank you enough, Ancestor, for this."

"I'll send you shipments of the nanite broth every once in a while, just tell your Dad to take it once in a while and he'll feel it." A frown came onto Kane's features "For the curse I condemned your Mother and Aunt to, the curse of effective genetic immortality, the Survival Instinct, and an urge to make a difference in the world, this is the least I can do to make it up to them. Thank you, my child, for this chance to atone for my indiscretions."

That was one of the few times Harmony Shepard cried, and it was one of the even fewer times when she cried tears of utmost joy. Yes, she was a tough, no-nonsense soldier girl, but it had always bothered her how her father was aging while her mother remained constant. In fact, last year she had heard a major argument between her parents over the subject. Dan wanted to get a divorce after he turned forty-five so that he wouldn't be wasting Jane's time and energy on an old wrinkled coot. Jane had basically screamed in his face that he was an idiot and stomped on his feet (she had been about to slap him, but caught herself in time since slaps to the face were very emotionally painful whereas stomps to the foot were generally less so, or so she told Harmony after the fight when she asked) then basically told him in less eloquent terms that she was never going to sign any divorce papers that he filed just because he would grow old and she wouldn't.

Interestingly, instead of locking him out of the bedroom that night, Jane was seen doing lots of fun things with her husband including playing video games, talking about things, etc. that did not involve physicality for the next few days. In the end, Dan backed down on the issue and admitted that even if he got old he could still be worth her time, but Harmony knew from what her Dad had told her that if he _really_ became a drag on Jane then he would probably shoot himself. "Why?" Harmony had asked her father blankly when they had spoken after the reconciliation, not understanding her father's idiocy.

"When you love someone, really love someone, you would do anything to make them happy. Some people say that if you really love someone you would never give them up, I believe that, but I also believe that sometimes you have to face reality. If I manage to somehow survive to sixty-five, chances are I'll have become a drag to Jane. It would really be better for her to find a younger, smarter, attractive man, so I'd have to disappear, one way or another. I'd want her to move on, to put me where I belong, in the past, and move on to bigger and better things. She's so critically important to this world, to humanity that it isn't even funny, and I can't let her waste her precious time and energy on me like I know she would."

Harmony's private opinion was that that was a load of philosophical bullshit that was an excuse to hide one's sense of hopelessness, just like the excuses many people used for becoming monks, but she hadn't told her father. After that conversation with her Dad was one of the other times she'd let herself cry, feeling immensely sorry for her parents and the curse that was mortality. Now, however, once her tears of joy stopped coming, Harmony smiled wolfishly, she had taken that issue straight out of her parents' hands. Sure, her mother would someday be peeling back a white sheet to find her father under it, when accident statistics or assassination attempts caught up to him, but it would be many more joyful years in between. Mom had put so much work into her life that she deserved to enjoy some peace with Dad for many, many more years than she could currently expect given Dad wasn't even a member of the Old Families…

Harmony's joy lasted to King's Cross and beyond. It took some time for all of them to get off the platform, but she wasn't bothered by it. An old guard was up by the ticket barrier, letting them through in twos and threes so that the psychic compulsion fields around the gateway would continue to work instead of failing and revealing their sudden appearance to the attention of all the Muggles. "You must come and stay this summer, all three of you—I'll send you an owl."

"Thanks, I'll need something to look forward to." Harry said with a wan smile.

They were still inching their way along toward the gateway, some of the crowd called "Bye, Harry!" and "See you, Potter!"

"Still famous." Ron was grinning.

"Not where I'm going, I promise you." Harry sounded grim, and Harmony frowned (still over the moon inside), he never spoke of his home life, but from what he was saying it sounded like the Dursleys were abusive and they might need to pull a vigilante operation to make sure Harry survived the summer. The four of them passed through the gateway together

"There he is, Mom, there he is, look!" Harmony almost cringed at the bright-eyed innocence visible in the youngest Weasley child, hanging onto her mother's arm and pointing excitedly at Harry. It almost hurt to look at, with none of the mature calm practically bred into Harmony and her sister, not even mentioning the cold death in her own eyes. She had cried after daring to look herself in the eyes in the mirror after each of her first few kills (always in self-defence, but still ugly in her mind…) as she watched the life and hope fade inexorably from her own eyes. "Harry Potter! Look, Mom! I can see—"

"Be quiet, Ginny, and it's rude to point." Mrs. Weasley was a redheaded woman with fairly high cheekbones, rounded features, looked to be about 30 and who was a bit under Harmony and Hermione's height. Harmony knew Molly Weasley nee Prewett was, according to her reading up on the pureblood families of Britain, 45 years old, born in 1946. Privately, Harmony thought that she preferred her mother's hair colour, like blood (seen as drawn with a needle, not from a wound, the colours were quite different) or red wine, to the shocking orange of the Weasleys. She smiled at the twins, then directed her gaze down at the two short boys (though Ron was near her height) sandwiched between the two taller girls. "Busy year?" She asked kindly.

Harmony's first real note was that Kane was right, if physical symmetry was the main gauge of beauty, since it indicated genes less resistant to environmental corruption or mutagenesis, then with the damage-countering/repair the minds of psychics did every night when sleeping… The result was that the psychic definition of attractive was a step up from the typical Muggle definition of attractive. Now since she'd heard Mrs. Weasley be described as kind-faced, and taking a good look… then taken a good look at Ginny, she came to a wonderful and satisfying conclusion: she and Hermione were no longer going to rank near the very top even at maturity, assuming they stayed in the Wizarding World.

Instead, they'd be residing in a vague sort of higher-than-average level, something like the 80th percentile or something among magicals, corresponding to 95th or higher among muggles, who had a more normal distribution instead of it being skewed in favour of high symmetry as was the case among magicals. This was high enough for Hermione to net a decent bloke, but low enough to, with liberal application of an air of nerdiness, not to get harassed all day. It was closer to where their father would have ranked in wizarding society than where their mum would be. He was about 70th percentile though he hit the 90th or above among muggles.

The main reasons Mum married him were not even related to his good looks though, it was because he was a decent bloke and a very good friend who wasn't after anything specific of hers, plus they were attracted to each other. Sadly they were far from where their mother probably ranked, Jane was eyeballed by Harmony at 98th percentile or better in symmetry, even compared to the magicals, if you do not count the Veela population, though Harmony suspected there was Veela blood somewhere up their family line. The young redheaded girl named Ginny on the other hand ranked much higher than Harmony did at present. Yhe level of symmetry she was exhibiting at present would _easily_ rank somewhere in the 90th-plus percentile of _magicals_ Harmony had seen at Hogwarts, in Harmoyn's opinion (i.e. 90+ percent of the population would look less symmetric).

Idly, Harmony wondered why Kane had answered "It varies" with regards to life expectancy when psychic powers put together with the heritage of the Old Families. According to him, it depended on the branch of psychic power, the main focus of the individual's mind and knowledge, and how pure-blooded a magic-user, if their psionics were more to that aptitude, they were. Those who understood more about the biology of humans lived longer in general as their minds were better at scanning for problems, but Kane had also told her that the longer the family had magic-type psychic powers, the younger their members tended to die. In fact, members of the Old Families who were pure-blooded magic users for four to six generations or more had life spans indistinguishable from average magic users. When she asked him about the biological basis of that, he told her that he had to think before revealing something so huge. It was annoying, but understandable… more or less.

"Very. Thanks for the fudge and the sweater, Mrs. Weasley." Harry had answered politely while she was thinking.

"Oh, it was nothing, dear."

"Ready, are you?" A rude, obnoxious, male voice said. Harmony was suddenly inclined to shoot the purple-faced, moustached, clearly furious man glaring at her friend Harry and the cage that held Hedwig. Beside him stood a long-faced woman and a morbidly obese boy who both looked terrified of Harry. If these were Harry's relatives, he might be in real trouble… but she would have to find out where he lived first, and that would probably need at least a few weeks since Harry hadn't told her which primary school he went to, or which middle school he would have gone to.

"You must be Harry's family!" Mrs. Weasley greeted, oblivious to the man's obvious asshole nature.

"In a manner of speaking." Harry's uncle barked. "Hurry up, boy, we haven't got all day." The purple-faced angry man stalked off at that.

_Okay, so either he is a drill sergeant in disguise… yeah sure, bullshit. Or, more likely, he is an asshole who needs to be torn a new one._ Harmony concluded, while Harry told them "See you over the summer, then."

"Hope you have—er—a good holiday." Hermione was peering uncertainly after Harry's Uncle, looking rather shocked that anyone could be so unpleasant.

"Oh, I will." Harry was grinning "_They _don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home. I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer."

_That is not reassuring_, Harmony thought grimly. She smiled though as she saw their parents waiting for them and said her goodbyes to the boys with Hermione (hugging the boys tightly to them resulted in much blushing from the boys and incoherent babbling from Ron). Her younger twin tackled their father and was picked up and spun around, squealing happily. Harmony on the other hand hugged her mother and sighed happily, burying her nose in her mother's clothes and relaxing into her mother's tight embrace. It was good to be home again after all the events of the school year.

What shattered the relaxed, joyous mood was the fact that while they were riding home in their armoured car (with Iron Curtain Technology fitted and in use) Jane received an emergency phone call, unsecured, even, from Hannah. Three words were enough to signal the start of one of the largest man-hunts humanity would ever know until the days of the Tiberium Wars: "Yuriko's been abducted." This in fact broke the mood so badly that Harmony didn't get to talk to her Dad about the "Elixir of Life" i.e. nanite broth until two days later instead of that evening.

Seven-year-old Yuriko Shepard, adopted daughter of Hannah Shepard, had disappeared from the Shepard Residence in Canada, leaving behind the bodies of twenty-five guards and blood/tissue from at least seventeen attackers. Though the DNA had mostly been wrecked by a spray of sodium hydroxide used by the attackers, the distribution of blood types and what little genetic material they could recover pointed to one thing: At least eleven of the attackers were of Japanese descent, and all were East Asian descent. Relations with China were smooth, Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea didn't have the guts to stand up to SI, so that meant the only Asian country currently not on friendly terms with SI may well be responsible… or someone could be pinning it on that country on purpose. If it really was them, well, then the Empire of the Rising Sun was long overdue for a lesson in the idea of "Size Matters". They obviously didn't remember the huge meat grinder that was World War Two well enough.

It seemed that SI would need to gear up for another major war, just in case.

* * *

A/N: I did just upend RA3 canon to hell.

Second year and thereafter will be a lot more different from canon (and less tedious to write, especially Fifth Year when members of the Inquisitorial Squad… we'll see, and in the period after Seventh Year there will be a one-woman-conducted Great Purge). Harmony figures out the targeting system of the Basilisk, among other things, from the data she has based on its attacks and records in books.

I know the perfect theme song for Harmony, however, it is in, how shall we put it… Mandarin Chinese. I'll put a rough translation with it when she actually sings it to herself one day. Her other theme song will actually be sung by her sometime at Hogwarts.

I don't know what sort of ending I should give Harmony, the happy ending where she lives a long, fulfilling life working to better humanity, or the blaze of glory where she dies young (in 2020) after being captured by Santorum America and being forced to fight a gladiator match against one of Santorum's sons, in much the same way the movie _Gladiator_ goes at the end. GDI and Santorum's USA will seem even more despicable if I choose the latter route, but Nod will be much stronger if Harmony's with them. I will only invoke the gladiatorial match if, after reading Tales of the Tenth Street Reds, you feel there aren't enough reasons for SI to fully go into open war with the US and by association GDI. I find that highly unlikely at best given all the shit I've lined up, but perhaps (if needed) I'll have Harmony have a dream about what the alternative ending for her could have been.

REVIEW!


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